Gnaw
by Road Rhythm
Summary: That Dad already has another job lined up by the time he returns from his last one to collect them isn't surprising. What is a bit surprising is that he says he's got one for Sam and Dean, too. It's simple: to go into a box and stay there. To make it through. He should have defined it better.


**Warnings:** Oh, God. So many. Please, please read the warnings, guys.

Graphic child abuse, sibling incest, underage, psychological torture, sensory deprivation, isolation, starvation, unsafe/rough/painful sex, painplay, comeplay, bloodplay, humiliation, topping from the bottom, biting, feeding kink, manipulation, paraphilic ideation (vorarephilia).

This was supposed to be a quick fill for a prompt on spn_masquerade. It was not easy to write. The whole subject had been on my mind for a while already thanks to a certain asshole friend, but aside from a spectacularly blitzed Badfic Idol entry, nothing had actually come out of it. I wrote the first 5k of this back in March when I missed the Masquerade deadline, and—this is the hilarious part—I thought it was almost finished. Just slap an ending on it and move on.

After three months of technical difficulties and outright avoidance, this then happened in the space of about a week. I'm not sure how I feel about it.

* * *

::::

* * *

Dean turns twenty, and all of a sudden his favorite phrase is "Eat me."

Dean, can you turn down the music? Eat me. My partner for this project is picking me up in ten minutes, can you please not be weird? Eat me. It was a scratch, Dean, Jesus, what are you, my babysitter? Eat me. Dude! Is this your _jizz_ on my freaking underwear? Eat me. I'm not licking up my own spooge just because you dare me to, Dean, what the hell is it with you with that? Eat me. Holy fuck, you love this. Jesus. I didn't know, didn't know. And you, you're just taking it. You _love_ this. Oh, eat me. Your _socks_ , Dean. Your dirty socks. Your sweaty, wet, putrid socks, on my _pillow_ , on the— Have you done this before? You have, haven't you? Oh, God. I put my _mouth_ there, oh, my God, where's the bleach— Put your fucking _socks_ on my fucking _bed_ ever again and I swear—

Eat me.

It isn't, like, a rebellion thing. It would be for most people, but Dean doesn't have a rebellion thing. Half the time, he does what Sam's asking him to do, anyway, so it's not even really a refusal. As far as Sam can tell, he just really likes saying it. Sam doesn't particularly like hearing it, but since that's obviously not a consideration, after a while he just takes to proposing recipes and waits for Dean to realize how incredibly juvenile he sounds.

Not that he expects that to work. (It doesn't.)

 _Eat me_.

Boisterous, fraternal, ruffling Sam's hair when he shoulders past and ignores another demand of _Don't call me Sammy_.

Defiant, cocky, addressed to the freak of the week with a grin like a knife, giving Sam the strength he needs to step up behind the samodiva and cut its very, very human-looking throat.

Breathy and automatic and not very defiant at all when Sam loses patience, works their hips together viciously, crams his fingers up Dean's ass, scrapes his teeth over clavicle and breastbone, and bites down, hard.

Sam comes about a half a minute later and the post-orgasm daze he wonders, irrelevantly, how Dean would even fit.

* * *

That Dad already has another job lined up by the time he returns from his last one to collect them isn't surprising. What is a bit surprising is that he says he's got one for Sam and Dean, too.

If Sam is maybe kind of pleasantly surprised, he's also wary. This is not normal protocol. Dad works jobs; Dad and Dean work jobs; Dad, Dean, and Sam all work certain jobs together when Dad has decided it's a teachable moment. Dad does not send Sam and Dean off on jobs alone. Ever.

So that's one reason alarm bells go off when John says he has something for just the two of them. The other, though it takes much longer for Sam to process it, is that Dad's been weird ever since this job at the beginning of the school year that was supposed to be open-and-shut and take three days, travel included. He went off with two other hunters and didn't come back for two and half weeks. He came back alone, but all that that meant was that the other two had gone their own way as soon as the job had wrapped up. Nothing remarkable about that. Nothing remarkable about hunts running over, either; that was why he'd left Dean with Sam in the first place. That, and the fact that according to Dad, Dean wasn't ready for wendigos.

Sam rubbed that in a little. It was his duty.

Dad _looked_ okay when he came back from that job. A bit drawn, maybe, but unharmed. Nevertheless, he was off. Not erratic behavior-off, or possessed- or replaced-off; not even particularly secretive-off, though of course the baseline for that was set rather high. In fact, maybe a better word would have been _shaken_ , had Sam been capable of thinking it in the same sentence with his father. Occasionally, in the months since, Sam has caught a look in John's eyes and wanted to ask what happened, or what he's thinking, or maybe _Are you all right?_ , but the words always stop in his mouth.

"I have a mission for you two," he tells them this time, as Sam is sneaking the lube back into his duffel in a handful of (clean) socks.

Dean looks to Sam. There's no message in it; it's just an instinctive moment of contact. Checking the channel. "For me and Sammy? What is it?"

"I'll tell you on the way."

From their current squat in South Carolina they will drive to Sweet Home, Oregon. Once there, Dad will turn south to deal with a routine haunting outside of Medford. Dean is vibrating with excitement and poorly concealed pride (Sam is not excited _or_ proud; if he's sort of psyched about this, it's only because he's going to be partnered with Dean instead of getting left behind or having Dad breathing down their necks) but, despite that, won't ask for details. _Dad tells us what we need to know when we need to know it_ , he tells Sam. Repeatedly.

"So what's this job?" Sam asks for him, arms folded on the back of the front seat.

"It isn't a job."

"But you said—"

"I said 'mission,' not 'job.'"

Sam's temper flares. "What's the difference?"

Dean shoots him a warning look in the sideview mirror. Fuck him. Sam's sixteen, and he's going to be a sophomore. He should be a junior, but no, he's going to be a goddamned _sophomore_ , at _sixteen_ , because Dad yanks them around the country so much that Sam's records are screwier than a sex club upstairs from a hardware shop. And he doesn't care how humiliating that is, or about the fact that Sam can't list shit in the way of extracurriculars on college applications because they haven't spent more than three months in the same state since 1992. He cares about revenge. He cares about their infinite preparedness for battles they shouldn't be fighting and about putting them through their paces with progressively weird tasks that he calls _missions_ with an absolutely straight face. Sam is itching for a fight.

He isn't going to get one, though, because Dean's the only one who notices Sam's outburst. Dad is too preoccupied to even cut him down to size.

"It's a training exercise. But it's important."

"O-kayyyyy…." Sam lets his tone ask the question: _That makes it different from every other bullshit dog run you put us through how, exactly?_

Dad lets a couple of miles go by before he answers. "I debated telling you ahead of time, but I want you to have these next few days to prepare. Mentally. That's the whole point of this, so you'll have a rehearsed experience to fall back on when it happens to you out in the field."

Dean's face is fucking electroplated in respectfulness. "What's that, sir?"

"Hunters get hurt, hunters get separated, hunters get lost. You've had training for all of that. You can haul ass when that's what you need to do to survive, but so can a lot of people. What a lot of hunters can't deal with, and what's going to happen sooner or later if you hunt long enough, is being trapped."

Even Dean is starting to look a little wary, now. "I don't get it. Sir."

John's face is impassive. It rarely is, Sam realizes suddenly. Dean is impassive all the time, a true, maddening blank even when he's dressing it up with a smirk and some shit talk, but Dad isn't, really. He looks stern, or threatening, or grim, or disappointed, but he always looks something he's really feeling. Now his face is locked down now. "Bob McDowell has a survival shelter out in the Hobart preserve," he says. "He owes me a favor. Said we could use it. You'll have water and rations. Normal equipment for a backwoods hunt, no more. It'll be safe, but apart from that, it's going to be just like the real thing."

It takes Sam way too long to fold his brain around what their father is getting at.

"You're going to lock us up."

Dad's eyes cut up to him in the rearview mirror, annoyed. Annoyed and maybe the tiniest bit guilty. "It's a training exercise."

"Okay," Dean says. Thinking. Planning. "We can do that. How long?"

"Two weeks. Then we'll get you out."

They hit a pothole. Sam's teeth chip together when he fails to brace himself. "Two _weeks?"_

"It has air," Dad adds.

"Oh. Wow. That's good."

"I won't lie: it's going to be hard, but it's far safer than your practice hunts. You handle those. Handle this."

Sam feels lightheaded. "Hear that, Dean? Two weeks locked in a box. Locked. In. A box. But it's cool; we get air. Boy! Can you believe it? Air!"

John cuts him off. "Listen to me. Something like this is _going_ to happen to you, one day. Probably worse. You need to be ready. Are you hearing me?"

"You're insane."

"Sam!" someone snaps. Sam isn't sure if it's Dad or Dean.

"You're talking about burying us alive!"

"Don't be melodramatic!"

"You can't do this to us!"

Dad jerks them off the road, throws the car into park, and turns to face the back. He certainly isn't impassive now. "Pull yourself together!"

Sam breathes heavily through his nose.

"I have seen this sort of thing _break_ people before. Seasoned hunters. Soldiers who'd done three tours. Heroes. You have to be better. I need to know that if you get trapped on a real hunt, with something looking for you and lives on the line, with your brother depending on you, you will keep your head and survive. How are you going to do that if you have hysterics over the thought of it? This isn't Little League anymore, Sam, so control yourself and start acting like an adult!"

Sam says nothing, but won't look down or away. He stares at his father like he can make this stop by the force of his rage alone. Dad lets the silence stretch out for a minute or more before he's apparently satisfied that obedience has been upheld. Then he puts them back on the road.

"I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think you could handle it," he says over an hour later. It's a sop. An I-believe-in-you,-soldier. Maybe that kind of paltering appeal to pride will work on Dean, but it's not going to work on Sam.

Going from the glimpses he gets of Dean's impassive face, Sam thinks maybe it isn't even going to work on him, this time.

* * *

Bob McDowell is a fucking asshole. Sam has never liked Bob McDowell.

"S' about a half a mile up ahead," his flat voice says. If he sounds bad-tempered, though, it's at having them there at all, not because he has any moral compunction about helping a psychopath _bury his children alive_.

McDowell supplies a lot of hunters with a lot of ammo. That's mostly what Sam knows about him. He's also a survivalist nut (hence the bunker) of the government-paranoid, tax-evasive, not-so-slightly racist variety, and Sam doesn't know what kind of debt he owes their father, but he's not surprised McDowell's in a hurry to discharge it.

"I remember." Dad's voice, an arm's length ahead.

"Know. Meant for them."

At least someone remembers Sam and Dean are here.

They walk together, close enough that the backs of their hands brush as they swing. Back, forth, back. They are hyper-aware of each other, every instinctive registration of each other's locations, paces, and breathing brought suddenly to consciousness—but both of them are even more focused on Dad. Listening to where he steps, to the cracking or thump of different terrain under his tread, to the brief pauses that suggest he's stepping over obstacles. Occasionally he throws some specific direction over his shoulder. Their progress is slow.

Probably because Sam and Dean are wearing motherfucking _blindfolds_.

They're doing well, though. They've practiced this before.

Even with all three of them taking turns at the wheel, it took about four days to drive clear across the country. Dad had recommended that they use the time to brush up on mental discipline, and to help Sam do it, assigned him an extra hundred push ups every day before dinner. If he'd hoped this would help Sam find focus, he was in luck.

The first day, Dean sat quietly in the passenger seat, speaking only when spoken to, face impassive the way Sam wishes (God, _so much_ ) he could make his own. By the next morning, he'd recovered his usual gung-ho attitude toward training exercises. If his grins and ribbings and _Kiss the floor with them nips, there, Sammy_ s were a bit too bright, in truth, Sam didn't notice.

By the third day, Sam and John weren't speaking at all.

Sam hears Dean's boot slip—unstable rock, maybe a mossy log—and is already reaching out before Dean can even swear. He grips Dean's bicep for the half second that's all he needs to regain his footing, and then they're steady, again.

"Watch your step," Sam says, voice laced with acid.

"Eat me," Dean mutters.

"Careful what you wish for, I might actually have to."

Dad ignores them.

A little worm of an idea wriggles up to the surface of Sam's thoughts. The prime directive for their training exercises, ever since Dad found out that Sam _knew_ and stopped trying to hide the fact that they were training exercises, has always been to respond as if the situation were real to the maximum extent feasible. Martial artists, their father has always told them and sometimes showed them, are often the worst equipped in a real fight because they've trained themselves to register fighting as something less than life and death. Monsters don't slap you on the back at the end of a round. Survival isn't a game, son. Rote responses get you killed. Every time you fight, it had better be at least a little bit real, even with each other. Especially with each other.

So—Sam's just drawing on his training, here—maybe the whole point of this is that they're not supposed to sit back and just let themselves be buried the hell alive.

Sam can feel it in the next moment when Dean has the same brainwave. It's that little electric crackle along the bare skin of his wrist, the one that makes his nerves hum and floods his synapses with _deandeandean_ and makes him feel like he's ready for anything.

"What do you think, Mr. Spock?" Dean says under his breath.

Yeah. They're on the same page. "Kobayashi Maru," Sam says.

They go three, four, five more steps, and then they tear off the blindfolds and make a break for it.

Six minutes later, they're being frog-marched back on the same bearing they broke away from, only now Dad's pissed and they can see exactly how far into the middle of nowhere they are because the blindfolds got lost. Of _course_ McDowell has pit traps all over the public land he's appropriated for survivalist nutbaggery. McDowell's a fucking asshole.

* * *

And that's how they end up in a twelve-by-twelve hole in the ground.

Dean _oof_ s as he lands on the dirt floor beside Sam. Their packs thud down after them, one after the other. Overhead, the trapdoor squeaks, groans, and clangs shut.

There are muffled voices outside. Then shovels grate into soil and clods of earth start hitting the door.

The hair-thin line of light around the trapdoor disappears in chunks, like something enormous taking bites out of it. Then it's truly dark. Sam pushes himself up to sit against the concrete wall and draws his knees up. He hears Dean move one of the packs, then a zipper, and then a flashlight clicks on.

They saw all that there is to see in the few seconds they had before Dad and McDowell shut the door, really. It's a concrete box. It has a dirt floor, cinder block walls, a cache of water, and a bucket in the corner. From what they saw coming in, they'll be getting buried about four, five feet down. Earth piling onto the trapdoor is still audible, but growing fainter. _Thud. Thud. Thud_.

Dean pans the beam over the walls. "We've stayed in worse," he offers. Sam snorts. After only a few seconds, Dean turns off the flashlight.

His shirt rasps against the wall as he lowers himself to sit beside Sam. Sam can just barely feel the warmth of him along his side. If Dad and McDowell are still up there, filling in the hole over the door to the outside, they can't hear it anymore. Still, they listen for a while.

Dean breaks the silence. "Right, so. Ground rules. Whoever tops off the bucket gets the honor of digging a pit into McDowell's floor. I don't go into your bag, you don't go into mine. And if you waste all our battery life reading _War and Peace_ , you're a dead man."

"As if Dad would leave us that much entertainment. Or that much light." Sam wonders what it will take to make Dean admit what their father's really done. "At least I don't have to look at your face for two weeks."

"Oh, eat me."

"With mushrooms and caper sauce," Sam says, voice hollow. He isn't really even sure what caper sauce is.

Dean's shoulder nudges his. "Cheer up. You're always bitching about wanting to stay in one place for a while."

That stings, but it's delivered just amiably enough that Sam can't tell whether it was meant to. After a minute, Dean gets up and retrieves the packs. The zipper tags jingle softly as he returns. "This one's yours," he says, nudging a lump against Sam's knees, then setting it down at Sam's feet when Sam doesn't take it. Sam hears him open his own pack and start digging through it. "We should inventory." Dean's tone is the particular shade of neutral it gets when his patience is wearing thin, but Sam still doesn't answer.

Clunks, rustles, crinkles. Lots and lots of crinkles. Another clunk. More crinkles, tapering off into nothing. A sigh.

"What've we got?" Sam asks despite himself.

For a moment, he half expects Dean to tell him to find the fuck out for himself. They packed these bags themselves, of course, but they also know full well that Dad revised the contents. Finally Dean says, "Pretty much what he said: standard overnight backwoods gear. Extra set of batteries, extra socks, first aid. Aw, man, he took my Walkman." Another pause. "He put extra emergency blankets in mine. Three. Might've in yours, too."

That's big. Coming from John, that's practically equivalent to packing them a teddy bear, and it should make Sam feel loved, or something.

"How much food?"

There's another pause. It's a very long pause. It's filled with lots of crinkling noises, like Dean is sorting through lots of things in wrappers, but he could just be counting the same things again and again, but why would he need to do that, and it sure didn't _feel_ like two weeks' worth of food when Sam was carrying out here, but he can't stop his hopes rising—

"Dean?"

"Two days."

He must have heard that wrong. "What?"

"Two days. Four sacks of jerky, six Snickers. Emergency type-stuff."

"No way." Now Sam does reach for his pack. "What the hell was all that cellophane, then?"

"The emergency blankets." Dean sounds annoyed.

Sam paws through his backpack: weapons, ammo and field maintenance kit, socks, batteries, four crinkly rectangles of emergency blankets, first aid, the fucker _took out his spare underwear_ —and that's it. He checks again, then again. There's nothing else.

"I don't have anything."

"What? Bullshit, give it here." Now Dean sounds unnerved.

Sam does, but he already knows he didn't miss anything. He's too numb to feel bitter that Dad entrusted all of the food to Dean.

Dean stops digging. "Oh," is all he says.

"Okay, this isn't bad," he adds a minute later. "It's still a day for each of us. Which actually makes more sense, since that's what we usually carry."

Three king-size Snickers and two sacks of jerky per person. About two or three thousand calories altogether, probably. It _is_ what they usually carry. Usually, however, they are carrying it because they expect to be out for a day and it's common sense to account for delays. Not because they're about to spend two solid weeks locked in a box with nothing else.

The only thing keeping Sam from having a true meltdown right now is Dean at his side. It's pitch black in here, but Sam can picture the faint disgust on his brother's perfect face at such a display, and that's enough to keep him silent if not calm.

It isn't that Sam doesn't see Dad's logic, here. Yes, if something snatched them, they'd be lucky to even keep their packs. If something trapped them, they'd have to fight through the stresses of cold, dark, boredom, thirst, and hunger to mount their escape. He gets all that. It just isn't helping him. Their father is literally starving them. He has taken them out to this Hansel and Gretel hole in the ground, locked them in, buried them, and is going to starve them for half a month. Sam hunts ghosts on the weekends, and this is the most insane thing that has ever happened to him.

He's breathing heavily. It's not panic; it's anger.

"It'll be fine," Dean says. "We'll ration it."

"How, Dean? No, seriously, how? How are we supposed to do that?"

"There's this thing people do, Sammy, where sometimes they wait a few minutes between meals—"

"We don't have a clock, Dean."

Dean's silent.

"There's no light down here." Sam's own voice sounds weird to him in here, close and dead and flat. "Flashlights and spare batteries'll last, what, twelve hours? Sixteen? How do we ration _those_? Two _weeks,_ Dean, Jesus—"

"Hey, hey." Dean's hand is big and warm on Sam's chest. "We'll be fine, all right? We can play Twenty Questions and sleep fourteen hours out of the day. It'll be like your dream vacation. It's only a couple of weeks, Sam."

"Is it?"

The hand on his chest stills. "Huh?"

"What if he doesn't come back?"

Dean withdraws his hand. "Stop being such a little shit," he says shortly. "Dad's coming back for us, and you fucking well know it. Climb the hell off your cross."

Sam wants to hit him. He wants to break his nose and feel the warm gush in the dark. "Dad's on a _job_ , in case you've forgotten, Dean, so fuck you."

"It's a routine haunting, Sam."

"'Nothing is routine.'" The Quotable John Winchester.

"Dad wouldn't take chances with this."

"So you're admitting that this is different? Because he takes chances every time we go out in the field."

"He has a reason for everything he does, okay? I mean, c'mon, how many things have we personally wasted that like to snatch people? And you heard what he said: he's seen this stuff break seasoned men. He wants us to be better than that. He wants us to be the best."

"You didn't really believe he'd do it, did you?" Sam says viciously.

Dean punches him. At least, Dean tries, but Sam can feel the wind-up where they touch and it's dark in here, so it's easy to twist—not too far, Sam doesn't want it not to land at all—and let it be a glancing blow that does more damage to Dean's knuckles than to Sam's face.

Dean didn't, is the thing. Dean has _faith_ in the man. The genuine article, the kind Sam only wishes he had in God.

He can hear Dean breathing heavily in the dark. His other hand stays hard and bruising on Sam's bicep for a minute longer before shoving him away. "We're not talking about this anymore."

"There's a word for what he's doing to us."

"What the hell is it with you and your martyrdom complex? Dad's training us, and God knows why he even tries with you. We get to do shit no one else our age can even dream about, make a difference no one out there in the rat race can possibly understand, and you don't even care. Just—all of it, you just throw it back, like you'd _rather_ be some yuppie instead of a hero. You'd rather be comfortable than great."

"We're buried alive in the dark waiting to starve. I think that goes a little bit past _uncomfortable_ , don't you?"

"Yeah, Sam, it's going to suck, because it's supposed to. But guess what? We're not moving. We don't have to do anything. We've got enough food and plenty of water. It won't fucking kill you to be uncomfortable for a while, so maybe you should try it, instead of whining in my goddamned ear every time someone asks you to do something. Grow the fuck up."

Then Dean is gone. His bag smacks against his leg as he stands. "I'm going to have a nap," he informs Sam, and retreats to the other side of the room.

Sam listens to him unzip his pack, take out an emergency blanket, spread it on the ground, and punch his bag into an acceptable shape. He listens, and then he curls up on his side in the dirt. The ground is hard-packed and slightly damp, digging into his hipbone and cold under his bruised-hot cheek. He should follow Dean's example and use the supplies their father did leave them to conserve his body heat, make himself as comfortable as he can, but he doesn't want to. Right now, he wants to be uncomfortable, wants to be cold and alone and wake up hurting, as if that will make anyone sorry other than him. Across the room, Dean shifts the bag he's using as a pillow a few more times.

Sam shuts his eyes. It makes no difference to what he can see.

* * *

Scraping wakes Sam.

He's never been prone to disorientation upon waking, so there's no momentary reprieve where he doesn't know where he is. He's flat on his back in Bob McDowell's bunker. He can't place the sounds, though. Something metal is involved, and maybe dirt, but that's the best he's got.

"What are you doing?" he asks Dean.

He can almost hear Dean's guilty start. "Uh. Digging."

Sam tries to put that together. "We can't _dig_ our way out of here, you idiot."

"Thanks, Einstein, I fucking know that." More digging. "We're going to need a pit once the bucket fills up. I came over here to take a piss and figured it would be good to use the bucket to dig with, because I sure as hell don't want to do that to my knife, and it kinda has to be empty first."

Sam listens. "But you are using your knife."

"Yeah, well, don't rub it in," Dean says, sounding, for the first time, honestly bitter. "Floor's too hard and the bucket's plastic."

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. Must be one hell of a piss pit. Sam lies there. It's weird that Dean hasn't ordered him off his ass to help. It's extra weird that he hasn't demanded to use Sam's knife instead of his own. Sam should probably go over and help because it's the right thing to do, or at least because it's their sanitation for the next two weeks, but the fact is, they aren't going to be producing enough waste for any of this to matter.

Dean finishes whatever he was doing, stamps at the earth, and relieves himself. The smell is noticeable in the small space.

Sam feels more than hears Dean hesitate in the middle of the room. "Wanna turn the lights on for a while?"

What would be the point? It won't change anything. "I'm hungry," Sam says.

Dean sighs, comes over, and sits beside him. "We gotta make it last, Sammy."

"I know."

Fingers wiggle on his cheek, the unbruised one. "Can chew on my fingers," Dean offers, and the ghost of a smile tweaks Sam's lips despite himself. He always used to chew Dean's fingers in the car when he was a baby. Not that he remembers back that far, but it somehow never stopped after that. Instead it turned into a kind of game, the main attraction of which was the sort of amazed revulsion it inspired in their father, even as he'd look at them in the rearview mirror in something like real affection while Sam pretended to be a monster, chomping Dean's fingers off, and Dean pretended to be in pain, disgusted by Sam's monster-slobber. They didn't tire of it until Dean hit puberty.

"Nah," says Sam, "no ketchup." Humiliatingly, his voice cracks.

Dean sighs. "Sammy," he says, and then he stretches out next to Sam, pulling his emergency blanket over both of them and wrapping his arms around his waist. The Mylar has none of the weight of a real blanket. Dean's breath is warm on his face and smells of the McDonald's they had for breakfast. It's rotten, but it still makes Sam's stomach rumble. Dean's hand rubs soothing circles there.

* * *

"Okay. Got the tablecloth ready, Jeeves?"

Sam rolls his eyes. "Yes, Master."

"Then let the feast begin."

Sam spreads the emergency blanket, neatly folded into a two-by-two square, in the center of the room. Yellow light shines down on it from where his flashlight hangs on a protruding bolt in the trapdoor's fixture. They've already found out that Dean's doesn't work. It did when Dean packed it, Sam has no doubt about that, but now it doesn't. God knows what lesson their father intends them to learn from that.

By mutual, unspoken agreement, they've waited a day to do this. At least, they waited for their best guess at a day. With no watches, no natural light, no sounds from outside, and nothing to do other than sleep, drink water, and piss, there's no telling how accurate they are.

With great ceremony, Dean lays the first Snickers bar in the center of the space blanket. "Great Scott, Jeeves, we're dining on silver," he says in an incredibly and intentionally shitty British accent. He opens the Snickers wrapper more meticulously than he ever has in his life and offers it to Sam. "Wrapper-licking privileges for my best girl?"

Sam wants to say no, because frankly, being reduced to licking Snickers wrappers is not the gift Dean thinks it is. But this is Dean trying to make it up to him, even if he's careful to be a little bit of an asshole about it, and Sam's no longer in the mood to throw it back in his face. He takes the wrapper and tongues at the little dabs of chocolate and caramel adhered to it until they're gone.

Dean watches him with what Sam flatters himself is hunger in his eyes. Then it occurs to him that it probably _is_ hunger, and not the kind that has much to do with Sam. Whatever. He finishes and wipes his hand across his mouth, staring defiantly back.

Dean clears his throat and crouches down. "All right, main course." He positions his penknife right in the center of the candy bar and cuts. He probably thinks that Sam can't see him angle his blade so that one piece comes out larger, because Dean can be remarkably stupid about the dumbest stuff, but Sam still takes the larger piece when Dean hands it to him without comment.

They eat over the Mylar so that it collects every stray crumb of chocolate. Sam meant to eat slowly and draw it out, but as soon as his throat closes over the first mouthful, he's gone, and suddenly the candy bar is, too. Acid surges around it in his stomach.

"I got the wrapper, you get the tablecloth," he says before Dean can go there.

Dean looks across at him, face inscrutable. He sucks one finger into his mouth, then the other. Then he shifts until he's on his front, over the emergency blanket, and slowly pokes out his tongue. He rests it there, against the surface, before looking up at Sam and drawing it back into his mouth. Just like that, Sam's mouth is dry and his dick is hard. Carefully, missing nothing, Dean licks the blanket clean, eyes glittering and locked on Sam in the flashlight beam.

"Um," says Sam, intelligently.

Dean straightens up. "Wanna play Twenty Questions?"

Sam blinks several times. He's sitting on his knees like a fucking moron, with his shoes getting dirt on the laces and his dick pressing against the seam of his fly, and there's this spot on Dean's face that wasn't there a minute ago and it registers suddenly that it's chocolate, from where Dean pressed his face into the floor licking it up.

"Sure," Sam manages finally.

"You go first."

"No, you go," Sam says, mind a perfect blank.

Dean smirks. "Yeah, okay." He goes over and sits against the wall, one leg bent and falling open, rubbing his belly as if in great contentment. Asshole. "I've got it, go ahead."

"Animal, vegetable, or mineral?"

Dean eyeballs Sam's crotch. Asshole. Sam's sixteen, he can't help it. "Definitely animal."

Sam blushes furiously but isn't falling for such an obvious feint. "Is it bigger than this room?"

Dean considers. "Pass."

"You can't pass, you dickbag, it's Twenty Questions."

"Then yes. Sort of." Sam makes a frustrated noise. "Hey, you're the one who didn't want to allow passes."

"Is it this bunker?"

"No. Animal, remember? Jeez, how do you make straight As."

"Is it my mounting homicidal rage?"

"Nope." There's a sliver of skin visible between Dean's shirt and his jeans' waistband. He scritches at it.

"Lives on land, sea, or air?"

"Land. Mostly. Definitely not air."

The fuck? "What're we playing for, anyway?"

"I don't know. It's Twenty Questions, do you have to play for anything?"

"Yes," Sam says, because just playing to kill time makes it impossible to ignore just how much time they've got.

"Fine." Dean reaches both hands behind his head to massage his neck, rolling it from side to side until it pops. It makes his shirt stretch over his chest and ride up on his stomach. "Loser has to… give me a back massage. A really, really good one. Until I say to stop."

Sam rolls his eyes. "How many legs does it have?"

"Huh?"

" _Legs_ ," Sam says, ignoring the splay of Dean's. "You said it lives on land, so how many legs does it have?"

"How the fuck should I know?"

"Are you kidding me right now?"

"Bigger than the room, but contained in it," Dean says meaningfully, like he actually thinks this is helping.

"Can it talk?"

"No."

"What's it smell like?"

"Warm apple pie."

Sam's cock bobs awkwardly in his jeans when he crawls over there. "What the hell kind of animal smells like pie, other than the mermaid Hooters waitresses in your wet dreams?"

"Stumped, huh, Sammy? Man, am I gonna enjoy that back rub. Hey, make sure you get those dimples right over my butt—"

Sam goes for the chocolate on his face. It's a good distraction from the fact that his stomach's still empty.

* * *

They fool around. A lot. What the hell else is there to do? If Dad didn't see that one coming, then he really didn't think this through.

Sam gets a lot of pleasure out of how much Dad doesn't know.

"Sammy," Dean gasps, and Sam can hear him toss his head on the floor even though it's too dark to see it. Sam grinds down harder on him, tugging their cocks together in a grip that's way too tight. Precome pulses out of Dean's slit at the pain.

"Why do you get like this all the time, huh?" Dean mumbles, hands half-searching, half-petting over pieces of Sam in no perceptible order. Like a young child soothing an animal.

Like everything else these days, it just pisses Sam off. "Like what?"

"Like you're—" He breaks off cursing when Sam squeezes his fist around both of them.

They don't fuck on the emergency blankets. The flimsy Mylar is too precious. This means that they fuck in the dirt. Sam was repulsed at first, though it didn't slow him down; now it still repulses him but he can't stop chasing it, licking the filth off Dean's skin and then grinding his face down into the floor to collect more on the wet spot so he can lick it off again. Dean what-the-hells at him over it but it's a fake struggle, thrusting his hips up all gaspy and breathless.

Sam's already come once. He held Dean down and came all over him and Dean let him. Then he smeared it all over Dean's front and Dean swore, nothing fake about it, and rolled them until he had Sam under him and pulled Sam's hair hard while he rutted against Sam's limp dick and the mess he'd made. Sam laid there and took it long enough to make Dean think he'd let him finish that way before snaking his hand in behind his brother's legs to grab his balls, hard, pulling him up short in more ways than one. The choked sound of pain and frustration Dean made was enough to get Sam hard again all by itself.

Dried come's flaking off Dean's sternum. Sam scrapes some of it off with his teeth and Dean makes this sound, deep down inside, and his cock jumps in Sam's grip.

"No," Sam says, and shoves him into the floor to make him stay. He reaches out and snags his own backpack, unzipping the front compartment one-handed.

"Sammy?" Dean asks, sitting up on his elbows? "What're you—?"

Sam's fingers find what he wanted. Wasn't a lot in there to choose from. Of course Dad took their light and their underwear and their _food_ but left them this, of course he did, and Sam will make him sorry.

He climbs up into Dean's lap and pumps his hips against Dean's stomach once, twice, three times and grabs Dean's thigh, moving him where Sam wants him and wrapping one leg around Dean's back. He flips the cap off on its little plastic tether. FP-10 pours thick and fragrant over his fingers.

He knows the instant the smell hits Dean's nose, because Dean straightens up and says, "Oh, hell no. You are not fucking me with gun oil."

Sam sinks his nails into his brother's chest. "What makes you think," he hisses in his ear, "That I'll be giving you _anything?"_

The sound that pulls out of Dean is like lifeblood.

Sam doesn't stretch himself. He wants it to hurt. Maybe Dean had a point when he mouthed off about Sam being in a mood, but Dean will just have to deal, because they are _locked in a box together_ —

He forces himself down as hard as he can. The pain steals his breath, but it's still not hard enough; Dean's only a couple inches in, and when Sam gropes back there to feel how much he's taken, he finds it's a lot less than he thought. Dean's moan makes Sam's vision, in the pitch black, flush red.

Sam grits his teeth, braces himself on Dean's shoulders, and shoves himself down again. Dean makes this choked, sobbing, dying sound. Tears sting at the corners of Sam's eyes. It _hurts_. It blots out everything. His fingers ring the last couple inches of Dean that he has to take, smearing him with gun oil, and all Sam can think, grimly, is that Dad doesn't know Sam is gladder to have the gun oil than he would be to have food.

"Oh, God, Sam. Sam. Please."

Sam's not really listening. If it were Dean, Dean would be listening with exquisite care, responding to every request express or implied, but Sam has tried more than once to get him to understand that he's a fool.

He rises up on his knees to shove himself back down, then does it again, and again, and again. This isn't the first time he's taken Dean, but it's never hurt anything like this, and it's getting worse instead of easier. He can feel his insides cling to Dean and tear on him. The pain builds into agony, a dull ache starts up in the small of his back, and Sam keeps going.

He lifts up particularly fast, rips himself so hard that he can't help crying out, and suddenly he sounds pathetic even to his own ears. Dean's hands fly up around him even as he shakes under it. "Sam, Sammy, shit, what the hell, man, hey." His voice is panicked (horrified). "Jesus, Sammy. C'mon, baby, shh, hey, hey."

Who in the hell does he think Sam is? He folds down over Dean, snarling as he tucks his knees tight up against Dean's sides and fucking his cock deeper into himself, and you'd think Dean would have seen that coming but apparently he didn't, from the way his voice chokes off when Sam's hips start hitching faster over him.

"Whoever you think we are, we're not," Sam says with his face mashed into the juncture of Dean's shoulder and neck. It's unintelligible.

"Don't want to hurt you." Dean's hands slide down Sam's back, up, down, adding a little force to Sam's every other thrust though he probably doesn't even realize it.

"Fucking bullshit. You love this."

And because Sam loses his mind when he can't get clean and their father knows it but he's locked them in a glorified root cellar with no soap and no shower and no washrag and no toothbrush and no clean underwear and a bucket in the corner, Sam has no choice but to go as far in the opposite direction as he can, so he returns to the job of cleaning his own soured come off Dean's skin with his teeth.

Dean loses his mind for it. Every time Sam bites over his chest, he jerks underneath him like he's being shot. "Sam. _Sam. Sam!"_

The sex still hurts, but the gun oil's well distributed now and Sam even thinks he can feel the slide of something else back there, maybe blood, maybe shit. Whatever it is, he'll eat that off of Dean, too.

He comes with his skinny teenaged cock trapped tight between their bodies, messing Dean up all over again. There's nothing to distract him from the pain after that, and it's almost better that way.

"Don't you dare hold out on me," he says in Dean's ear, shaky now himself. He gathers up his semen with clumsy fingers and shoves them past Dean's lips. "If you don't come, I'll never talk to you again."

Dean twists underneath him with a cry. Sam swivels his hips again and again until it feels like he's ripping himself, free to just do whatever he wants to Dean now he's not trying to get friction on his own cock. He _knows_ Dean could come from this. He's been on the brink for ages, so what the fuck is his problem?

Sam forces his tongue into Dean's mouth, swipes it around, gathers the flavor of gun oil and come and spits it out on Dean's chest. When he bends down to root around for it with his face, he finds he's managed to hit Dean's left nipple, so he fastens onto it, sucking with a force that will leave a mark even if there's no light to see and with far more teeth than he's ever used before.

Dean makes a noise. Hardly the first, but this one's different, somehow, by the way he's clearly trying to hold it in. So Sam does it again. Dean's fingers come up to Sam's ass, and the force with which his nails dig in puts Sam's violence to shame.

Dean's voice is suddenly clear in Sam's ear. "Harder," he says.

It's so rare that Dean actually asks for something that Sam really has no choice. He bites down, then bites down again, then again until he tastes blood.

A full minute later, when Dean's finished coming, Sam lies on top of him, staring into the dark and tonguing at the iron on his teeth. The world slows and stops spinning, and their breaths are loud in the quiet.

Sam shifts; Dean slips out of him with a warm, disgusting rush. He makes a pained noise. He expects Dean to show some sympathy, at least in the form of mocking him, the way he always does when Sam hurts himself, but he's silent. In the perfect black, there's no way to guess what's on his face.

At some point, they get up and find their clothing. Sam drinks water and cleans himself as best he can; it sounds like Dean does the same. They lower themselves onto emergency blankets side by side, but don't curl up together.

"You really bit me," Dean says after a while.

Sam swallows. He wishes he could see him, but he's afraid to get out the flashlight. "Well, if you keep going around telling people to do it, shouldn't be surprised when someone does."

Dean acquiesces with a brief sound. There's a very faint rustling of cloth that might be him rubbing at his chest where Sam's teeth broke skin.

* * *

Sam is a healthy, active, sixteen-year-old boy. He is hungry all the time.

Dean thinks it's only been a day since they ate the first Snickers bar. Sam is sure it's been longer. It needs to be longer, before they can eat something else, since they have fourteen days and ten food items, but there is no way of proving who's right.

Except trial by combat, of course.

They roll across the floor. The flashlight beam swings crazily where one of them hit it at some point. Dean's older, bigger, and more skilled, but Sam has perfected a simple strategy that for all of his strength and expertise, Dean doesn't seem to know what to do with: he hangs on. No matter where Dean tries to retreat, Sam hangs on. No matter how hard they go down, Sam hangs on. When Dean tries to set him up for an arm bar, Sam goes with him. When Dean tries to choke him out, Sam wriggles his hand into Dean's cuff until his arm goes right up along Dean's in the sleeve of his shirt, and the consternation on Dean's face is downright comical. When Dean tries to kiss him, which is a feint designed only to distract Sam, Sam grabs his crotch and shows him exactly what he thinks of it.

They're not fighting for physical control of the food, of course. Calories are far too precious to risk that way; those are safe in Dean's jacket in the corner. Really, they're fighting because they can only sleep, screw, or play Twenty Questions for so long at a go, and Dad made sure they wouldn't have a lot of other options.

Both of them know that it's a waste of energy. Energy is something that's become very quantifiable in these confines. Sanity has, too, though, and they both need this.

Sam grunts as Dean rolls them. Christ, his ass smarts, but it's a distant sensation compared to the hunger in his belly. He's a teenager with some extraordinarily physical extracurriculars, so, truly, _he's hungry all the time_ , but the term is being redefined for him entirely. It takes at least this much effort just to get his mind off of it.

Dean grips his wrist until Sam's fingers involuntarily release his balls. "Get your arm out of my arm," he growls.

"Make me." Sam head-butts him.

Dean curses, even though it wasn't that hard, and then he fists his free hand in Sam's shirt collar and hauls them both to their feet, cable-staying each other. Sam goes with him, partly because that's what he's been doing all along so why stop now, partly because with his arm stuck in Dean's shirt he has no choice. They sway like a pair of drunks in a sack race. Sam's head sends the flashlight beam dancing again. Dean whips his arm like a jump rope, and Sam's along with it, then does it again and again until Sam has to let go or sprain his wrist. Which he might be willing to do, if it wouldn't prevent him from whacking off in here. He plants his feet and holds on.

All at once, Dean's cuff tears, Sam's arm is flung free, and they're both flung backwards. Sam's head collides with the flashlight on its hook, the flashlight falls, Dean's foot lands on the flashlight, and Dean falls.

He lands in complete darkness.

There's a long pause. "Oh, shit," Dean says.

"Maybe it got switched off," Sam says, knowing it didn't.

"Yeah, maybe."

They both pat around for it on the floor. Sam's the one who finds it. The barrel feels intact, but the head's at an angle and when Sam screws it on and off and back on again, all that comes out of it is a grating sound.

Sam stares at the flashlight. Or where he knows the flashlight to be.

"Fuck. _Fuck!"_ Dean punches something, probably the floor.

Sam feels nothing except the emptiness of his stomach. They could try the batteries from this one in the other flashlight, but they already know it's a lost cause because they tried the spare batteries in it right off. Something's wrong with the bulb—sabotaged by their father in the name of verisimilitude.

He probably hadn't expected them to take out the other one on their own.

All the good feeling generated by the sparring match has fled. They have uncountable hours left trapped in the dark, they can't even see each other, and they're still starving.

Starving. What a word. _Dad, Dean, I'm starving_. Sam thinks of every time he's ever said that, and thought he meant it, and wants to punch himself.

"You okay?" Dean asks quietly, close by.

Sam pulls back. "I'm fine."

Dean lets his breath out. Sam recognizes it as the sound Dean makes when Sam's frustrating the hell out of him, but Sam didn't even _do_ anything and he doesn't think he could give a rat's ass even if he had. He has to get out of here.

"C'mon, let's have something to eat, huh?" Dean's tone is cajoling, like Sam is seven.

Now, more than ever, they should hold out, make the food last since the light's gone, but Sam can't. He just can't. "Yeah, okay."

They repeat the ceremony with the folded blanket to cut the next candy bar over, but there's no play in it this time. Dean's the one to open the wrapper again. Dean's the one their father entrusted with the food, after all. His penknife snicks open.

"Cut them equally, this time," Sam says in the dark.

"What?"

"You heard me."

Dean doesn't answer, but a second later he hands Sam a length of candy, and if it's too large, it's cut subtly enough that Sam can't tell.

He starts to raise it to his mouth but pauses. Dean's making masticating sounds a couple of feet away. Sam carefully sets his portion down where he'll be able to find it again and waits several seconds. "Eat yours already?" he asks casually.

Swallowing noise. Belch. "Yep."

"Good." Sam's hand darts out, closes on the back of Dean's neck, and hauls his mouth in against his. He pries Dean's jaw open with his fingers on either side of his face and forces his tongue into Dean's mouth. It tastes of nothing. Dean makes a sound of protest and shoves him away.

"Liar," Sam says. He finds his meal in the dark, picks it up, and crosses the room.

"What are you doing?"

Sam taps with the toe of his sneaker until he finds the bucket in the far corner. They haven't left much in there, but what there is smells rank enough. "Eat it," he says.

"What?"

"Eat it. Eat your half."

"Sam—"

"I know what you sound like when you're talking with your mouth full, and that isn't it."

"Wow, fuck you, too, bitch. Look, I've been your age, remember? And God knows I took more than my fair share, because teenagers just need it. You're a growing goddamned boy, okay?"

Sam kicks the side of the bucket so that Dean can hear it. "Eat yours, or I drop mine in here."

"Don't you dare, you little shit."

"One."

"I'm trying to do you a favor, and you act like I'm torturing you or something."

"Two."

"Okay, okay! Fine, just— There, you happy?" he says, and that _is_ what Dean sounds like when he talks with his mouth full.

Sam closes his eyes in relief. He wasn't at all sure he'd be able to do it. "Yeah," he says. "Ecstatic."

* * *

It is very, very dark for a very, very long time.

* * *

He's in a supermarket-cum-gas station. One part of the store is selling tractors. This part is selling pastries. He sorts through them. There are half-cooked pies slopped on the shelves in shallow boxes, and his stomach turns at the way the pastry deforms like skin.

He's at the register with a clear plastic bag of hot dogs and steaks, warm, and the clerk ringing him up is smirking at him. "What?" Sam asks, irritated.

"If you really want to," the clerk says, still amused. People are getting restless behind, waiting for Sam to figure it out and move the fuck along.

"Why wouldn't I? Just ring me up."

The clerk lifts up the bag and spreads the surface of a steak through the plastic, and it parts like the edges of a wound, and then Sam sees them, little white bodies with black dots at the end, wriggling and straining all through the inside of the meat, turning its striations to meal. Sam lets out a yelp and bolts.

White worms fall like warm rain as he runs through the aisles of vegetables and cheeses and meats. The clerk laughs, and his breath smells like rotting eggs.

He wakes up at some point.

"Sammy."

Sam's eyes are open. He stares at the wall. He can feel it under his palm, gritty and damp, but he cannot see it.

"Earth to Sam."

He lies there. He can picture answering, or getting up, or relieving his bladder, but he is detached from it. He can picture it but not care about it.

Sam is sixteen. He's used to violent emotions. Stupid injustices, stupid inconveniences, stupid slights: no matter how petty it is, generally, he can't help caring about it. He feels something about everything, usually anger or loathing or self-loathing or self-pity. And whatever he's feeling, he gets everywhere. He's wanted Dean's ability to hide himself away behind a persona, to stick to it so steadfastly that it doesn't even matter if Sam calls him on it because he'll just smirk and mess up Sam's hair while Sam loses whatever cool he ever had.

Now Sam is drained of feeling. Nothing rocks him. He doesn't feel triumph, because he doesn't feel anything.

"Yosemite Sam."

The pain in his stomach has slid away into a more general ache, and there's a fog in his head that never quite clears. He wonders what kind of spirit Dad went to hunt. He wonders how exactly they will elect to die if he never comes back, or comes back too late. He's thought about it a lot already, but before it was with angry satisfaction, picturing his father digging out the trapdoor and opening up the tomb only to find them twined up in each other in death. Sam went back and forth on whether they were naked in that tableau or not.

Now all the drama and pathos has gone out of the fantasy. He doesn't think about the moment Dad finds them and is sorry. It's summer outside, but down here it's cool and damp, and Sam thinks only of how seeds that are buried too far down in the ground rot.

Dean sighs. Sam hears him come on hands and knees over the Mylar they've put down, little _pish, pish_ sounds. He could get up, he's not physically that far gone yet, but what's the point, especially when Dean will always come to him whether Sam wants it or not.

He slides down at Sam's side. He wasn't that far away to begin with, but now he's inches away, warm against Sam's front. Warmth is welcome. It takes calories to generate body heat, and they're running way the hell low on those.

He hooks one leg over Sam's, drapes his arm over Sam's waist, and tucks Sam's shoulder under his chin. Never in a million years would they do this up in the world. They probably wouldn't even do as much of it in here if they still had the flashlight, but the darkness, true, pitch-black, countdown-to-hallucinations darkness, makes for a lot of plausible deniability.

"How long do you think it'll take us to die?"

Against him, Dean's body goes completely rigid. Then he releases Sam and, slowly, withdraws each point of contact.

That's what it takes to cut through the fog and make Sam realize he's fucked up. He should have known, anyway, because it's not like he didn't do it on purpose. Dean is moving with strange precision in the dark, gathering himself up to leave, and Sam's arm shoots out before he can stop it.

"'M sorry! Dean!"

The arm under his fingers (is it thinner?) is rigid still. Sam scrabbles at it. Did he think a moment ago that he couldn't feel anything anymore? What the hell is this clawing up his throat, then? "Dean! Dean!" There's pressure on his chest, squeezing vise-tight until he can barely get the words out, and the general inability to breathe gets really messy when he starts to sob.

"God, Sam, it's okay. It's okay."

His head hurts and the crying's making it worse, but he can't stop. Humiliation makes the whole feeling swell to something ever more huge and unmanageable. The dark doesn't help, because it amplifies every thick, mucusy sound he's making, and he can feel Dean battling through what must be revulsion when he pulls Sam in. God. Dean. He's supposed to be apologizing to Dean, but instead he's just making it all about him, again, getting his need and emotion everywhere, and Dean is stroking his hair.

"It's just your blood sugar, kiddo," Dean says into his temple, and that makes sense but it doesn't make it stop. "Just low blood sugar and a fucked up internal clock. We'll be okay."

Sam would sell his soul to be able to control this right now.

Dean shushes him and rocks them where they lie on their sides. Once, not all that long ago, it was about the most comforting thing in the world, but now Sam knows what it feels like to invade this person's body, even to the pinch of the little coarse hairs when his legs tighten around Sam's waist, and he feels sick. It doesn't work anymore. Sam broke it.

"Shh, shh, shhh."

It takes forever for the bands around his chest to start to loosen, and he almost wants to chase the agony because what's left when the worst of it goes is emptiness. Like the hollow feeling in his stomach has lodged up under his breastbone. Dean's still there with him, because Dean's always there.

His fingers comb through Sam's lank hair. "It'll be over soon, Sammy."

It won't. Sam isn't sure how long it's been, but he knows there's no way it's even been a week. They're more than halfway through their food.

Dean's thumbs wipe his eyes. Then Dean turns him over, Sam unresisting, and tucks himself close up against behind. He pulls a second emergency blanket over them, and Sam feels Dean's fingers mash over his face, his nose, find his lips.

The angle's weird when Dean presses them in and against Sam's teeth, but Sam still opens up. Whatever it takes to have whatever part of Dean he can as close as he can.

"Remember Carrots?" Dean asks, and Sam laughs watery around his fingers. Of course he remembers the game, but he'd forgotten that they called it that.

Chewing Dean's fingers had gone on as long as it had because Sam had just always done it, but the game gained form and momentum when they hit a phase where Sam would not eat carrots. This was a problem, because carrots were, like, the one vegetable other than potatoes they could reliably afford fresh, and even John knew that vegetables were supposed to happen in kids' diets somewhere. He was surprisingly patient about the whole thing, though then again he should have been, Sam was five, but no amount of coaxing or reasoning would get Sam to eat them. Then one day Dean was sticking his fingers in Sam's mouth in the backseat, per usual, and Sam was rawring like he'd made some great kill, also per usual, and Dean suddenly yelled, "Joke's on you! My fingers are _carrots!"_

Sam busted out laughing. They both did. It was the funniest thing ever said by anybody, anywhere, anytime in history. Nothing John did or said could get them to shut up about it. " _Monster_ carrots!" Sam specified, because he was always the monster eating Dean, Dean's own special monster; ergo, fingers : monsters :: carrots : people. The more it grossed their father out, the more awesome Sam and Dean thought it was. Better even than eating boogers. Dean would stick his fingers in there and Sam would go to town, enthusiastically chewing them until the pads wrinkled and the nails grew soft. And while John might have regarded the whole affair with horrified fascination, Sam did go back to eating carrots after that.

"Man, that game was great," Dean says.

"Rawr," Sam says around his fingers, and he feels his brother's laugh all through him.

Dean's fingers taste of dirt, salt, come, and urine. Sam sucks on them and tongues at their ends until he can taste what's under their nails: more of the same, plus a trace of chocolate. Dean sighs, a good, contented sigh this time, like Sam is comforting him with this instead of the other way around.

Time is unglued down here; there's no way to tell how long Sam spends mouthing at his brother's fingers. The nails grow papery under his tongue and he chews them off. He's not really aware of doing it, but chewing and swallowing even that much is soothing, for both of them, apparently. They fall asleep like that.

* * *

They play hangman on each other's skin. They sleep. They have sex in protracted and progressively inventive ways.

The sex comes at larger and larger intervals and has begun to lose some of its athleticism. Neither one has much energy left for movement.

Sam feels his face with his hands and tries to tell if it's thinner.

* * *

They go from not being able to keep their hands off of each other, in one way or another, to not being able to stand being in the same room together. Except they don't get a choice on that one, because they're locked in a fucking box.

In his more rational moments, Sam doesn't even think it's anything personal, though of course it's a different story when paranoia has its way with him, as it increasingly does. They're far enough down that there aren't any bugs coming up out of the floor, but a few still wander in along the ventilator pipes set into the walls, and once Dean had to come over here to make Sam stop scratching himself when Sam thought he could feel them all over, burrowing in. For the most part, though, they're staying on opposite sides of the room. No hard feelings. They just seriously fucking need some space.

They've divided the chamber up, drawing in the dirt with the tips of their penknives, which is pointless of course because they can't see it. Dean has a side, Sam has a side, and there's a neutral end zone with the water in one corner and the bucket in the other. They play Twenty Questions from time to time, but they really were scraping the bottom with that one by the time Sam was eleven, so for the most part it's quiet.

Sam's playing a drawing game. The object of the game is to draw a circle in the dirt and then see how many circles he can draw inside it. He can't see them, and feeling with his fingers just destroys their edges, so he has to guess.

Dean mutters something. Sam ignores him. Dean's been muttering off and on for a while now, and he's awake, Sam checked, so it's not a nightmare. Then Dean shouts. It's wordless, but there's no mistaking the fear in his voice, and Sam forgets about the imaginary line down the center of the room.

"Dean?"

"No, no, stop, come back, bring it back—"

Sam crouches beside him, a careful foot and a half between them. It's been long enough since the flashlight went that they can orient to sound almost as well as they ever could by vision. "Dean, you okay?"

Dean turns to face him. It's audible in the direction of his voice. "They're taking _parts_ of me," he says, which is nonsensical but the horror in his voice makes Sam's pulse speed up. Telegraphing the movement by sliding his hand across the wall, Sam reaches out to feel Dean's forehead. Shit.

"What are, Dean?"

"The refrigerators!"

Sam blinks. Dean's a little warm, yeah, and that's not great news, but it's nowhere near enough to explain this.

Then he gets it: the hallucinations have arrived.

He's more than a little surprised. He knew that it would happen eventually—darkness, isolation, hunger, pick your stressor—but he'd assumed that he'd be the first to succumb. He isn't sure how to feel about it being Dean.

Not that how he feels about it is the point.

"You know they're not really there, right?" he asks carefully.

The frustration in Dean's voice comes as a relief. " _Yes_ , Sam, I fucking well know. Been seeing them for a while, now. At first they were just off in the corners, you know? Then it got to be a conga line down the middle of my vision. But suddenly I could feel them, every time one went through me, and now they're taking away _parts of me_ —"

Sam's arms go around him. It isn't girly (it isn't); it's just the tactile equivalent of making eye contact in this sightless world. Anyway, Dean clings back, which is the part that matters. "Are you seeing them now?" he asks against Dean's shoulder.

Dean shifts his grip on the back of Sam's neck a couple of times, then shakes his head. Sam releases the breath he's been holding.

"Okay, come on." He tugs Dean to his feet and after him. If he hadn't already made up his mind, the way Dean follows without question would have done it.

Two food items are left: one bag of jerky and one Snickers. Sam retrieves the jerky from its place between two water jugs.

They drink a lot, first. Water is the one thing they have more than enough of. They've long since filled up the waste bucket and had to start using the trench Dean dug, after all, though Dean seemed inordinately—hah—pissy about it. Only when they've filled their stomachs with water do they take the jerky over to the blanket they use for a table and sit, side by side.

Dean's trembling. No, Dean's _shivering_. Dean shivering makes Sam want to shiver. He snags one of the emergency blankets and wraps it around them.

Last time the food disappeared in seconds, for both of them. They were on the brink of devouring the rest of their supply when they finished, and it took Herculean effort and frantic blow jobs to avert the impulse. This time it's less about physical hunger than it is about comfort and scraping what they can of it out of that bag, and they can go slowly. It would be wrong to say that they savor it, but they take their time.

They chew one small chip at a time. The flavors of the jerky burst on Sam's tongue, rich to the point of disgust. He cannot recall ever being this aware of how much of the stuff is composed of cast-off parts. He would eat pounds of it if he could.

"Harvest Gold," Dean says out of nowhere.

"Pardon?"

"Harvest Gold. The refrigerators. You know, like that oven in that place we rented where the kitchen hadn't been renovated since the 70s? They are all Harvest fucking Gold. That's the worst part."

It's probably funny, but Sam doesn't laugh. Doesn't seem like Dean really meant for him to, either.

Sam hesitates with his fingers halfway into the jerky bag. Slowly as they're going, it's still too fast. They have to draw this out.

Dean seems to pick up on what he's thinking. "C'mere, got an idea."

It's sure to be gross, but whatever. They're a little bit past that now.

The bag crinkles when Dean reaches in; water sloshes in the jug as he takes a mouthful. Chewing noises ensue. Then his fingers snag in Sam's hair, maneuver his head, and Dean's pressing his greasy lips to Sam's.

It is indeed gross. Sam doesn't have it in him to care. Dean feeds him a morsel of masticated beef jerky in a gravy of juices, water, and spit, and Sam paws at his shoulders and tilts his head up for it like a baby bird.

It flips a switch somewhere deep inside. Dean's fed Sam for most of his life, but not like this. This is so much more fundamental. All his life, his deepest needs have all been named _Dean_. Now, here, in the dark and the cold, food has cast off all flimsy notions like surplus and choice and social ritual and revealed itself for the god it's always been, and its name is _Dean_ , too. Sam makes a noise into his mouth. Dean's hand cups his ass.

They're both panting when Sam swallows and pulls away. Dean is a genius. This is a good game. "Now me," Sam demands.

"Nah, you'll get it everywhere. Remember the time you tried to shotgun me?"

Dean has a point, and they can't afford to lose a crumb. "Fine," Sam says, digging into the jerky bag, "this way, then."

He rubs his spare thumb through Dean's stubble and pets his scalp until Dean makes a noise. Praising, comforting. He offers prayers of thanks to the darkness that lets him do this.

Dean's mouth falls open when Sam coaxes it to , and when he spreads his fingers under Dean's chin and strokes them, Dean obediently shifts his jaw to present his tongue. It's plump and soft when Sam presses the chip of jerky down on it. He fastens his mouth wide open over Dean's throat while Dean chews and swallows, so he can feel it happening.

Next Dean tries it Sam's way. Sam clambers into his lap almost unprompted and clings to him like he's a tree, and Dean makes such a deep, pleased noise that Sam glows all over.

Sam isn't hard from this. Dean is. That's a surprising inversion. Dean tugs at him a couple of times through his jeans to try to get him in the game, but Sam's too drunk on the food to be distracted by sex so Dean shrugs and carries on. He slides one broad palm up Sam's back under his shirt and takes a piece of food. Sam can smell it in his hand.

"Yeah, there you are, there's my good boy," Dean's whispering. "You gonna open up for it? Let me feed you? Take whatever I give you. Made for me, made for me to feed, made right outta the same stuff, taste just the same. Growin' like a weed, so good and strong, open up, sweetheart."

And more. Dean gets so lost in it, hard enough he's poking Sam in the tummy, that he seems to forget about the actual feeding part, and Sam, who knows exactly where the food is by the smell alone, gets impatient and goes to him. He swoops his head down and eats right out of Dean's palm.

Dean sucks in a breath. The meat is so laden with fat and salt, everything else disappears out of Sam's mind. Food, and Dean's arms around him. It's everything he's ever wanted.

"Chew," Dean tells him. "Chew real good."

Sam obeys. There's no order he could refuse from Dean right now. He chews, then chews again, gets everything out of the mouthful, and only swallows when Dean bids him. But it's not enough. He seizes Dean's palm and licks it fervently.

Dean loses it at that. He bears Sam to the floor and works his hips against him, plunges his tongue into Sam's mouth after the taste there, and Sam's dick barely has the opportunity to take interest because Dean comes in seconds. He lies there after, panting and patting Sam's shoulder.

Sam's eyes crinkle up with laughter in the dark. "I _knew_ you always got off on feeding me," he says.

Dean laughs and swats his chest. There is a sense that something's happened that Sam doesn't fully understand, but for once in his life, he's okay with that. His brother is fed and contented and freed from refrigerators. Just for a moment, their world is perfect.

* * *

When they get antsy after the beef jerky and it's too soon to consider eating the last Snickers bar, they take the edge off by chewing on each other. Mostly Sam chews on Dean, actually. It doesn't seem to do as much for him the other way around.

They're lying in a little Mylar nest, warm and smelly, popping each other's zits. Hangman's too hard a game, now. The refrigerators have been bothering Dean again. Sam's still waiting for his—he wonders what he'll see—and uses his status as officially the more sane of the two to boss Dean around and nursemaid him. The bite mark around his nipple is hot and inflamed; belatedly, Sam gets out the first aid kit and makes Dean submit to peroxide and creams. His temperature hasn't gotten worse, but it hasn't gotten better, so Dean's barred from strenuous activity. He may not ride Sam, even if he's kind of curious about and maybe now kinked for life on the gun oil thing; he must lie there like a good boy and let Sam rut them together and paint him and play with him when he gets bored (often) and suck his cock. Dean seems pretty okay with that last one.

Eventually, they're not going to have the energy even to screw. Sam tries not to think too hard about the sequence of events after that.

"Never have I ever… killed an animal when I wasn't hunting," Sam says.

"For fuck's sake, Sam, you can't play this game without alcohol."

"Of course you can."

"And there's not much point when you already know the other person."

"Well, have you?"

"No. Unless you count bugs. Why would that even occur to you?"

"Never have I ever eaten an eye booger."

"Liar."

"'S true," Sam insists.

"Bullshit. I have personally watched you eat the contents of your own nose."

"Eye boogers are different."

"Not really. Taste about the same. Salty, crunchy."

" _Ew_."

"You're kidding me, right? Five-year-old you ate snot, earthworms, and my fingers, but you're gonna draw the line at eye boogers?"

"Gotta draw it somewhere."

"What's the grossest thing you've ever eaten?"

"You."

"Hah, hah. Hey, you ever eaten a girl out?"

Sam squirms uncomfortably. "Yeah," he mumbles.

"What, really?" Dean raises up on an elbow. "Hey, hey, Sam the Man!" His glee isn't _fake_ , exactly, but something about it does feel forced. Sam might not notice if he weren't right here to feel Dean tense up. "Who was it?"

"Does it matter?"

"No, but you still have to say."

"Paige Forshay."

Dean guffaws. "Who tastes better, Sammy, Paige or me?"

On a purely aesthetic level, Paige, by miles, but that isn't the point. That's never been the point with Dean. "Fuck yourself."

"What's the grossest thing you ever _would_ eat?" Dean presses.

"Your dick." A lame and obvious joke, since Sam blew him maybe half an hour ago.

There's a pause. "That's a delicacy lots of places, you know."

Sam rolls his eyes. "You're thinking of testicles, Dean."

"Don't tell me what I'm thinking of. No, seriously, it's a thing. I knew this guy at that school in Flushing, right, his family's Japanese, and we went to this restaurant his uncle owns and they're serving bull's penis. Cow junk, big as life."

"Who _eats_ that?"

"The Japanese, apparently."

"Did you eat it?"

Dean shrugs, sort of defensive. "Yeah. I mean. Wasn't going to back down."

Sam will admit to a certain horrified fascination here, even as he can feel his balls trying to undo the last four years' downward journey. "How was it?"

"It was…." Dean rubs his thumb absently over Sam's shoulder for a minute. "…Really good, actually."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. Like. Tender, you know? It was mainly about the texture. Didn't really taste like anything."

"Huh."

"Next time we're in NYC, I'll take you."

Sam wrinkles his nose. "No, thanks."

"Champion cock-gobbler's gonna pretend to be a prude, that's hilarious."

Sam flushes all over, hot and ugly. He doesn't know why the comment bothers him. "Screw you," he says, and makes to get out of the nest.

"Aw, come on, don't be like that."

Sam really has no idea where he's going or what he's planning to do, if not lie here, so it's not like he needs a great reason to back-peddle. But he's still in medias flounce, so he does need _a_ reason. _Cock-gobbler_. Sounds so ugly. Like people around a trough, shoveling slops into their mouths with their hands. Is Sam like that?

Dean sighs, irritated and superior. He has an entire lexicon of sighs aimed at Sam. "Where are you going?"

"To jerk off." It's a lie; he's run out of gun oil and he's still beat off enough times his dick's starting to chafe. Maybe he'll play the circle game. Yeah, he'll play the circle game.

In retaliation, Dean starts singing _Bohemian Rhapsody_. Sam crouches in the corner and ignores him, taking out his penknife and starting to draw.

How long's it been? Dean thinks nine days. Sam thinks ten. They actually got into a fight about it before they both remembered that they can't actually settle the question. They won't know anything for sure until Dad digs them out.

Dad will. For a while Sam flaunted how much he didn't believe that he would, to piss Dean off and punish him for his faith in the man that was doing this to him, but now Sam needs to believe it. Dad will come and save them, and there will be safety and worry in his eyes. He'll be so sorry that this happened, because it was never really him, he was possessed (he wasn't, Sam did the tests), but Pastor Jim or Caleb or Bobby will have fixed him and he will get them out and hug them both and spoil them and take them wherever they want to go and buy them whatever they want to eat and he'll be so sorry that they'll never hunt again, they'll settle down somewhere with lots of grocery stores and Sam will go to school and Dean will go to college and then Sam will go to the same college and Dad will take them fishing on breaks and they'll be _normal_.

"Mamaaaa!" Dean bawls. "Just killed a man! Put a gun against his head! Pulled my trigger, now he's dead!"

Sam wipes his circles out and aerates the dirt with the littlest blade of his knife. He imagines sticking it into the nearest water jug so some flows out, what the texture of the mud would be like. Dean doesn't need to know he's already eaten some of the dirt.

Easy come, easy go.

"Mama, oooohh-oooo-oooo-ooohhh…."

Sam pats the dirt down into a fresh surface and trades the little blade for the larger one. He wishes Dean would shut up. He really, really wishes Dean would shut up.

"Carry on, CARRY ON!"

Sam grits his teeth and slashes aimlessly at the dirt.

"I sometimes wish I'd never been born at alllllll!"

"I can help you with that!" Sam shouts over his shoulder.

"Bridge!" Dean announces, and starts in on a vocalise of the guitar solo.

Scowling, Sam sits and picks under his nails with the penknife. He eat the little prizes off the blade. The real question here is, will Dean go on to "God Save the Queen," and if he does, will that let him out, or will he go back to the beginning of the album.

"Galileo! GALILEO! Galileo! GALILEO!" Dean's falsetto is even more obnoxious than the rest of his singing. Sam could make it permanent for him. Dean's the one who's all gung-ho about eating junk.

The circle game has long since lost its allure, Sam has to admit finally. He uses the tiny blade to shave up little patches of his leg hair, which he does put in his mouth but spits out again.

"Bismillah! No, we will not let you go (let me go)! Never, never let you go, never let me go, ohhh…."

He pats the dirt down, then does it harder. He wants to see if he can get it firm enough to cut pieces out. Hasn't thought as far ahead as to whether he'll eat them or not. Probably not. It's right next to the piss trench Dean dug.

He's squatting and putzing and shaving at the dirt in ways that make sense to him, all right, okay, it's not his fault he's really fucking stupid right now, when the knife slips on a root or something and slices into his hand. He yelps.

Dean breaks off immediately. "Sammy?"

"'M fine," Sam says, sucking on the cut.

"What happened?"

"'Ut 'yself."

"Shit, you okay?"

Sam takes his hand away from his mouth. " _Yes_ , Dean."

"Bitch. Yeah, you're fine. What are you doing over there?"

"Digging in the dirt."

"What? Why?" The blankets rustle.

"Something to do." He sucks on the cut again. He can't believe he's never noticed how good blood tastes. It's rich and warm and salty. Is there nutritional value in it if it's yours?

A zipper opens. "Get over here."

"Huh?"

"So I can fix your—whatever you hurt, dumbass. We have first aid stuff, remember?" Sam goes, stupidly. He actually hadn't remembered that. "You have to take it out of your mouth first," Dean says dryly, when Sam keeps noisily sucking on it.

Sam shrugs. "Tastes good."

Silence. A long, frigid silence. Then: "Give me your hand right fucking now."

Sam glowers, but does it. The cut's mostly stopped bleeding, anyway. Dean finds the edges of it by touch and has a band-aid on in seconds. "Get in here," he tells Sam. Sam's glad to. He's cold all the time, now.

As soon as they're settled, though, Sam starts fidgeting. He hadn't let himself think about it while he was over there close to it, but now he can't think of anything else: the Snickers bar, their last piece of food. It's tucked between two water jugs for safekeeping. He stomach rumbles, and he wishes he'd eaten some of the dirt.

"Settle down," Dean says, annoyed, turning them so Sam's back's to his front.

"Dean."

"What."

"I'm hungry."

"Tell me about it."

"Dean, I'm hungry."

"Oh, eat me, smart ass. Here." Dean gives him a couple of his fingers.

Sam sighs and closes his eyes. He was never much of a thumb sucker; it occurs to him, belatedly, that maybe that's because he's always had Dean to suck on, instead. He worries at the digits without even the rudimentary self-consciousness he had about this at first. Chewing them does nothing about the ache in his stomach, but it does still help.

He draws them out of his mouth long enough to ask, "Want mine?"

"Nah." Dean's voice is rough.

Sam goes back to it. Dean lets him manipulate his wrist and teethe at his fingertips, even though they must be raw since Sam's eaten the nails off twice over. He decides to see how much Dean will tolerate, and sets to gnawing the end of a thumb, taking the nail down to quick and tearing the softened cuticle.

Dean hisses, but he doesn't pull away. Sam's rewarded with tiny little beads of blood that dissolve in his saliva at once. Like his own, it's tasty. Anyway, it _has_ a taste, which is enough to make it exciting down here. Sam's maybe a little disappointed that it doesn't taste appreciably different from his, though he isn't sure what he had in mind.

Dean sighs. This one is from the uneasy chapter of the lexicon. "Hey, Sammy? You didn't, like… cut yourself on purpose, did you?"

Sam stiffens. It's because he's startled by the question, but Dean clearly reads it all wrong, withdrawing his fingers and tightening his arms, and he breathes out, "Jesus, Sammy."

"Dean, no, nothing like that. I was just fucking around."

"Right." A muscle works in Dean's jaw, against Sam's neck.

 _"It wasn't like that,"_ Sam tells him again, and if his pulse has gone weird and skippy, that's not his fault. It hadn't even crossed his mind. Really. Why did Dean have to bring it up?

Dean's arms tighten, slowly. They were tight to begin with, but this is a lot tighter and Sam doesn't think Dean even knows he's doing it, which is frightening. They tighten until his ribs can't expand and keep going. Sam gasps out a breath and can't get it back in again. His head begins to float.

"Don't ever think about doing that, Sammy." Dean's voice is right at his ear.

Sam's arms are pinned. He shakes his head, first trying to communicate, then trying to clear it, but nothing happens in either direction. Finally he rips the Mylar blanket trying to free one shoe and kicks as hard as he can back into Dean's shin.

Dean starts, stills, then relaxes his arms. Sam takes a gasping breath, and Dean seems to come to himself, a little bit, anyway. "Sammy? Okay, there?" he asks, a distant quality to his voice. Maybe it's the roaring in Sam's ears.

Sam coughs. "Fine," he croaks, eyes watering. His ribs hurt. Dean rubs his back through it, which hurts worse.

Dean reaches into Sam's pocket. Sam hears an unmistakable _snick_ and his heart leaps into his throat as he thinks, _Didn't mean it, just wanted you to stop, sorry, Dean, sorry_ , but Dean does something too quick with the penknife for Sam to catch it and then he's putting it away. "Open," he tells Sam.

Blood bursts on Sam's tongue. He swallows instinctively, but his brain's still trying to catch up. Dean has cut open the pad of his finger for Sam to suck on.

He doesn't want to do it, because Dean _cut himself open,_ Jesus _—_ a tiny nick by their standards, but still. What the fuck. Dean's still talking, though. His tone is even, but it makes the hair prickle on the back of Sam's neck.

"You don't get to do that." His finger presses on Sam's tongue until, hesitantly, Sam begins to suck around it. "You want it, you get it from me."

Sam might try to get it through to him that it was an accident, not an appetizer, not even something he did because he was bored and certainly not a suicide attempt, but his mouth is full.

"I'll know if you get it someplace other than me."

It's not a long cut, or deep. Sam knows, because he can't stop himself tonguing at it. Dean uses his other hand to milk his finger into his brother's mouth, and Sam twists and opens his mouth to catch it. Like with the food, in the game before, he can smell exactly where it is. The taste is so strong it blanks his mind, clearing away all the half-thoughts that have been taking over. Which civilization was it that thought they had a blood debt to their gods?

"That's good, Sam. Eat up."

Sam almost tells his brother that his blood tastes quite nice, but remembers in time that that would be weird.

* * *

As a test, Sam keeps trying to recite the poem he memorized the last week of school, next door to yesterday. Memory was a cornerstone of the coping strategy he'd formulated on the drive over here: he'd run through his collection of poetry and rituals, shore it up. Use the time to think. Maybe even use the time to train, in a sense, though he'd never admit it to their father.

It was a stupid idea. Thinking was the first thing the box digested, and then it started on memory. He could remember things just fine at the start, but now his mind always gets tangled up just a few lines in. Our Father, who art in April, be joyful unto trespasses. Et culpis omnibus expiati, singing desire into unend, unto ages of ages, pedicabo Dominum. Okay, so he's not even trying by the end, there, but it's been so much sleep it's hard to stay under long and he has to do something in the rest of the time.

 _no hungry man but wished him food_ , he remembers that part.

* * *

Dean has a nightmare. He won't tell Sam what it's about, and he can't be consoled for what feels like hours. Then he seems to remember where he is, or who he is, and pretends like nothing's wrong. He takes his stuff over to the other side of the room, and if Sam's cold then Dean has to be, too, but he won't let Sam come with him.

* * *

Questions crowd Sam's mind. He wonders where their father is right now: is he close by? Is he still working the job? Is he okay? Is he hurt? Is he in jail? Is Bob McDowell the only one he told where to find Sam and Dean? Is he mad at them? Sam knows he's mad at _him_. Mad enough?

He wonders what kind of spirit it was. He wonders if it really was a spirit. Jobs look like one thing on paper and turn out to be another when you get there, sometimes. Dad's been doing this for as long as Sam can remember, but he hasn't been doing it for his entire life. There's something out there somewhere that he doesn't know how to kill.

They did a spirit hunt once where a girl was locked up in somebody's basement, back in the 70s. He'd been raping her for years, but then he had a random aneurysm walking to the bakery one day and no one cleaned out his house, legal tangles. Her apparition's hands had bone showing out the end of the tips. She died lying on her front, still trying to get through the door.

Losing sleep imagining all the ways his father could be dying right now is nothing new, but it's got entirely new dimensions now. If John doesn't come back, McDowell knows where to find them, but McDowell was an accomplice in putting them down here. The safest thing for him, by far, will be to quietly leave them where they are.

Sam would really like to be able to say some of this out loud. He wants to talk to Dean about the possibility that Dad is dead somewhere, because he doesn't know how long they've been down here, but it's a long time. But he doesn't dare. It's not that it would piss Dean off, though it definitely would. Nor is it simply that it would infect Dean with his fear and despair when self-restraint from that sort of selfishness is surely the lesson, if any, Dad wanted him to get out of this. He can't do it because it's among the very few transgressions Dean will not brook from Sam. The one thing he cannot talk frankly to his brother about is his father.

Maybe that started when he could no longer speak frankly to his father about his brother.

Sam regrets it sometimes. He's never said so, mainly because he's afraid he'd learn that Dean regrets it, too, and has just been waiting for some sign from Sam to wash his hands of the whole filthy, fucked up thing, but Sam misses when they were simpler. Just Sam and Dean. Sometimes they're still exactly that simple, but the rest of the time makes Sam's head spin.

He started this because he wanted something that would be theirs separate from their father. He wanted a space where they'd be free from his commandments entirely, but he didn't know what he was doing. He can admit that now. He would never, in a million years, have guessed that not being able to tell Dad about something would have made him feel as trapped as having to.

The worst part is, he thinks that they maybe they really could go back if only Sam could stop _wanting_ things to be this way. If he could stop wanting Dean so much he wants to tear him apart to get inside him, and, yes, wanting the secrecy itself. There are these little hidden parts of Dean, and Sam wants them, and he wants there to be some of his own because it terrifies him to think that this might be all that there is of him. Especially when he can't stop getting himself and what he really thinks and, above all, what he really feels all over other people. He wants Dean's secrets and to be the sort of person who has secrets. But the best he can do is to have _this_ secret, and it's tearing him apart. Sam can't swallow secrets. If he swallowed Dean's, they'd just claw their way out of him.

Knowing as much doesn't kill how much he wants to try.

"Shhh, come on," Dean murmurs. He hitches the arm cradling Sam's shoulders to gather him up closer and works his other hand on Sam's cock. Their breath mingles where he's bowed over him. "Come on, Sammy. Want you to."

Sam finally comes.

* * *

It's getting really hard to think. He's okay, mostly, when he can touch Dean, because that's as good as seeing, but lately Dean wants space between them. Or maybe Sam started that. It's hard to remember things.

It's not just things in here, either. Everything that happened before they got here has taken on an unreal quality, such that Sam's no longer really sure how much of it to trust. The Biography of Sam Winchester seems pretty dubious: born, mother killed by supernatural entity, raised in car, commenced fucking brother, locked in box by father. Like. What. So there's that.

But it's broader than that. Deeper. He spaces out whenever he tries to think about it, but it's more like outside never existed, at all. He tries to hold onto things—facts, a sense of his own age, anger—but then he'll hit a patch where he feels very light throughout himself and that's so difficult to do.

Sam starts crying when he can't make it through the alphabet song. Dean shouts at him to shut up, he's trying to sleep. Sam doesn't understand why Dean's mad at him, and it makes him cry harder. Later he wakes up and isn't sure if there was dreaming involved.

It makes more sense for this to be a nightmare than not.

* * *

Sam begins to pray. He prays for practical things rather than spiritual ones. It feels awkward, because this isn't how he's ever used prayer. Like a lot of hangups in here, he soon forgets about that. He prays for delivery. He prays for God to get them out—have a kindly tourist couple happen upon them, have the trapdoor miraculously rust through, drop a bomb on them, Sam's not picky. Most of all, though, he prays for God to stop him.

During the drifting, floaty spell—which may have lasted hours or may have been days—it was easy to forget that there's still one piece of food left. Once that passes and Sam, whether he likes it or not, starts to feel like Sam again, it's impossible to forget.

It's _there_. He can't smell it, because it's in a wrapper, but he still knows as exactly where it is as if his proprioception extended to the entire room. The last remaining King Size, fat-laden, sugar-packed, heavy and compact Snickers bar is against the far wall, about a foot above the ground, resting on the shoulders of two gallon jugs of tap water stacked there. Ten feet away, approximately.

Neither one of them has said anything about eating it, because it's the last one. To delay eating it for as long as possible, to the moment when they're so physically weak there's no option, is the only sane course.

But Sam can't stop thinking about it.

He knows he could take it. They're sleeping a hell of a lot, and the wrapper sounds just like the emergency blankets, so Dean probably wouldn't even wake up. Even if he did, he'd probably pretend he'd never heard anything. Sam's rational and better selves doesn't want to do anything of the sort, but an ever-growing part of him very much does and he's miserable.

Sam wouldn't do that to Dean, he _wouldn't_ , except that, God help him—and Sam's quite literally praying, here—it's all he can think about.

Once, for history class, the substitute had them watch a video about the Donner Party. Forensic wonks talking about how it probably happened, whether everyone who was eaten was or wasn't dead beforehand, and so on. One of the researcher-types was talking about how it might not even have been their fault, because everybody thinks they'd never do anything like that but it turns out that in some people, past a certain point of hunger, higher brain functions like morality and personality go offline, and a set of hindbrain instructions get flipped on, instead. So you can never know for sure that you wouldn't do the same as the more active participants in the Donner Party. The end of this explanation was voiceover for grainy footage of a guy in a bad pioneer costume sharpening his axe with crude, automatic movements. Even at the time it kind of wigged Sam out.

Not that eating a Snickers is as bad as eating Dean. Except, in this case, it almost kind of is.

He finds himself kneeling in front of the water jugs. He doesn't remember coming over here, and he isn't immediately sure he hasn't imagined it. When his hand closes on the food, though, he knows that's real.

Behind him, Dean hasn't stirred.

He doesn't want to hold it for too long because his hand will melt the chocolate to the wrapper, but he can't seem to put it down.

Half of this is Dean's. Hell, all of it should be Dean's. He's given up his meals enough times over their lives. Sam is the worst kind of human being for even considering this, never mind what kind of brother he is.

It takes effort to get his throat to work, but finally he manages it. "Dean."

Silence.

"Dean!"

Mylar rustles. Sam waits for that to be followed by footfalls, because surely Dean's awake now, but there's nothing. "Dean, please come."

More noise, and this time Sam's sure he's awake, because that's the sound Dean's palm makes when he drags it over his stubble. He still doesn't speak or rise, though.

"Dean, please," Sam prays. "Please, I don't want to, I swear."

Dean's voice is soft in the darkness. "It's okay, Sam."

"It isn't!"

"I want you to have it."

"No, no," Sam moans. He still hasn't let go of the food.

"Yeah, Sammy, it's okay. It's how we should have done it from the start."

"I hate you." Sam starts to cry.

"Hey. Hey." Dean finally comes over. "This is my job, okay? I want you to have it."

Sam is breaking down, into full-bore, snot-everywhere, uncontrollable waterworks. "I'm sorry." He's sobbing with it. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please, I'm just _so hungry."_

"I'm okay, Sam, really. It's better this way. I just want to sleep the last of it, and food will just wake me up. It won't be long, now. You have it."

"Please don't."

Dean kneels behind him, arms reaching around in front. His fingers take the food, steady and sure, and Sam is fucked. "I want you to, Sammy."

The smell hits him the instant Dean opens the wrapper. The only thing stopping him from grabbing it and gobbling it is how much of a wreck he is, so wracked by sobs that he'd probably choke if he tried. Dean strokes his hair back, murmuring in his ear to calm him, but Sam can't stop.

"C'mon, Sammy. Open up. It's okay."

He's still hungry when it's gone, but Dean rubs his stomach through the cramps.

* * *

Turnips are another food Sam knows of and has fixed ideas about but has never eaten. In his dream he has, though. In his dream he eats them all the time. They grow in the dirt. He just has to dig them up.

They're _under_ here, he knows they are. He goes from one quilted field to another. There's lots of warm, nourishing sunlight. Why can't he figure out where he put them?

"Sam."

He plunges his hands into the soil, which is soft and feels a little bit like the inside of Dean's mouth, but no turnips.

"Sammy, c'mon."

He can _smell_ the turnips.

"Sam, wake up!"

He rolls over, on dirt that's a lot harder and colder than it was a moment ago. "Dean?"

Dean's voice is only a couple of feet above him. It's still pitch black, of course. "You done yet, Rip Van?"

"Huh?"

Dean sighs. "You were sleepwalking. Or sleep crawling, anyway. What did you think you were doing?"

"Digging for turnips."

"You're having a wet dream about food, and the best you can do is turnips?"

Sam shrugs, which of course Dean can't see.

"Right, well. Don't dig for them there. You're right next to the john."

As if hearing it brings his nose back on line, the overpowering stench of ammonia hits Sam and clears the last of the dream away. He peels himself off the ground and heads back to the other end of the room.

That's when he sees it. He's been half-dreading, half-impatient for them, but when he sees what he actually gets, he makes a pleased sound in the back of his throat. His hallucinations are surprisingly unobtrusive.

"What?" Dean asks.

"Lights," says Sam.

Dean doesn't have to ask what he means, though he's still silent for a moment. "What color?"

"White. Yellow."

"Yellow? Like, Harvest Gold yellow?"

Sam considers. The lights are just spots in the corners of his vision, nothing much. After all the darkness, they're actually kind of nice. "Yeah. Yeah, about that yellow."

* * *

Dean's fever gets worse. It's not bad, yet, but they're so precarious that it could go from not bad to disastrous in hours if not minutes. Sam hates himself for eating their last food, but that won't help Dean any, so he shoves it down and tends to his brother.

Dean mumbles in his sleep a lot. It's always been something he does occasionally, but now it happens at least once every time he sleeps. Mostly it's wordless. Some of it's nonsense: _don't dig in the fish; didn' steal 'em; don' wanna nap_. Sometimes it's Sam's name.

Sometimes it's _Dad_.

Since eating the last of the food, and putting an end to temptation, Sam's felt a little steadier, but he still doesn't like to stay out of reach of Dean for long. He tells himself that that's because Dean gets tense if he does, which is true, but the kinds of touches Sam hoards in the darkness are not the kind Dean would ever allow him outside or is guaranteed to forgive even in here.

Sam cards his fingers through Dean's hair. Unlike Sam's, which is rank, Dean's is still a pleasure to touch, short and velvety. Sam sits cross-legged with his back against the wall. The weight of Dean's skull on his calf is putting his foot to sleep but he doesn't want to dislodge his brother. He's always wanted to do this. Well. For a long time, anyway.

Dean rouses a little while later and lets Sam press water on him and fuss with his blankets for a minute before he starts slapping Sam's hands away. "All right, all right, enough, already. Get off, Nurse Frances."

Stiffly, Sam levers himself up to sit a couple feet away. His ass still hurts. He's still kind of enjoying the sensation, but Dean completely freaked out when Sam tried to get him to fuck him a second time, so he's not mentioned this.

Dean sighs. This one is his bleary, needing a moment and a coffee to collect himself sigh. He inherited it from their dad.

"Can feel you looking at me over there, you freak. Stop it."

Sam doesn't, naturally, but he smiles.

"Wanna play a game?" Dean asks.

Sam shakes his head, then remembers that Dean can't see or hear that and says, "Nah."

"Wanna fool around?"

"Not right now."

"Wanna sleep?"

"Can't."

"Well, what _do_ you want to do?"

Sam shrugs. That's audible because of the Mylar around his shoulders, so he doesn't elaborate.

"Right. Well. If Zen meditation is more your thing, knock yourself out, but I'm going to—"

"It's been two weeks," Sam says.

Dean's hand rasps over his face and drops with a space blanket _pish_ into his lap. "I know."

"You _know?"_

"Well, no, and neither do you, but… yeah. I think it's probably been about that."

Sam didn't think he had the energy for it anymore, but suddenly he's angry. "And you didn't say anything?"

"What's there to say? It'll be over soon." Dean sounds bitter. Well, pardon Sam for breathing.

"You could've— Why didn't you—?" He has no idea what he wants to say, is the thing. He hadn't expected Dean to corroborate him. _Two weeks_. If Dean thinks so, too, then it has to be. In a matter of hours, they'll be getting out of here.

Or, of course, they won't.

Sam's mind jams on it. There's the euphoria of rescue finally being at hand, but it's coupled to blind, paralyzing panic he had not expected. The panic stems from the possibility of Dad not returning, no longer just a hypothetical but soon to be decided. It must. Nothing else could account for it.

"I… I don't know what to say."

"Don't say anything, Sam." Dean just sounds tired now. "Just sit back and wait."

Sam feels kind of stupid now for saying no when Dean asked if he wanted to fool around; they may never have privacy like this again. Then again, maybe it's just as well, because who knows how long the wait will be and it's probably for the best if they're not buck naked when the box gets cracked open.

"Hey," Dean says, "C'mere." Sam scrambles over and lets him put an arm around his shoulders.

They sit and wait.

And wait.

Despite his restlessness, Sam dozes. Falling asleep happens easily and unexpectedly now, sleeping and waking blending into each other half of the time. It's still dark when he wakes up.

They drink water, relieve themselves. Practice Morse Code on each other's skin, give up when it keeps going to shit. It doesn't matter. Once they get out into the light and get fed, everything should be fine.

When Sam gets stiff from sitting in one place for too long, Dean rubs Sam's legs the way he used to during growing pains. It gets too cold to sit around like that, so they go back to what's become a shared nest. Undressing doesn't seem like a good idea right now, but Sam can't help cupping the back of Dean's head and pressing their mouths together.

They stay like that for a long time. Nothing more. Just two boys wrapped up in each other. There's no talking. Eventually they drift off again, Dean's heartbeat warm and slow beneath Sam's ear.

They sleep for a long time, but it's still dark when they wake.

* * *

 _Good night, love_.

The white and yellow lights have a gentle voice. They resolve into a gentle face. Soft, sweet-smelling hair hangs over him, trailing an acrid edge.

Sam is frozen. He's lying on his back, looking up, and the bed is hard and painful on his spine. There's little fear; he just can't move.

 _Compassion is the greatest gift,_ the voice whispers. The eyes looking out of it are golden. _When you learn mercy, you'll be ready to show them_.

Her hands are opening him up, almost painlessly, and tucking something into his stomach. It feels like a small, smooth stone.

 _There. That'll keep you going_.

Sam wakes up angry.

* * *

Their energy levels hit bottom and then begin to climb again. Sam knows this is because their bodies are finally starting to digest themselves in earnest.

It's been more than two weeks. Sam's not sure of much but he's sure of that. They could have been off by a day, before, maybe two, but it's been at least that long and nothing has happened except that they've dug a new hole and buried the weapons.

Sam kept the gun oil bottle out, though. It's empty, but it has such a warm smell.

Long tracts of time just get lost. Some of it's lost to kissing, some of it's lost to Sam pulling Dean's forearms across his mouth and mapping them so thoroughly that he knows measurably more about human anatomy than he did after honors biology. This is always a lazy activity for Sam, just a way for him to alleviate boredom without expending too much energy, but Dean unfailingly pops wood over it and once, silently, came, otherwise untouched. He said nothing, but Sam could smell it. It cost an effort not to open his pants to eat it.

It's a quiet enough limbo. They're past fighting with each other, permanently, Sam thinks.

Then Dean catches Sam eating dirt.

He hasn't been _hiding_ it, exactly. He's just been discreet. Which, okay, is maybe because he knew Dean wouldn't like it, but neither did he think it would cause him to lose it completely.

Dean's asleep. Sleep is always shallow now, but they've got half of the floor covered in emergency blankets and it's impossible to leave their corner without it being audible. Sam crouches and carefully peels back one corner of the farthest emergency blanket and feels around for the place. Samples a mouthful. There. This one spot has the best dirt: not too damp, not too dry, sort of peaty, marbled with clay. It's not Boston Market, but it takes the edge off when he feels like he's going to lose his mind if he can't just swallow something solid. He scoops some up with his penknife.

"What're you doing, Sammy?"

Sam nearly severs his brother's carotid when he whirls around, but Dean's ready for it. He intersects Sam's arm and deflects it harmlessly past his neck, even in the dark.

"Dean! What the hell?"

It's unfortunate that his mouth is full. He didn't exactly have time to swallow; you need to use water to wash it down. Sam spits hastily, but grit still sticks to the roof of his mouth and when Dean forces two of his fingers past Sam's teeth, he feels it there.

His brother goes still. "Is that dirt, Sam?"

What's Sam even supposed to say to that? Dean's other hand grabs his neck and shakes him. "Answer me!"

Sam chokes and coughs around the fingers that are still probing hard all around his mouth before he manages to get a grip on Dean's wrist and pull them out. "Dean, calm down—"

"Calm _down_? Calm down, Sam?"

Dean's voice suddenly _is_ calm, is the thing. The really alarming thing. "Dean, it's okay. It's not hurting anything. I'm okay."

Fists in his jacket slam him against the wall. Dean's breath is close on his face. " _Dirt_ ," he says. The dental makes a little puff of air.

Sam ducks, but Dean isn't aiming for him. He cries out at the sound Dean's fist makes when it hits. Something broke and it wasn't the wall.

"Dirt," Dean repeats, and punches the wall again. He stopped addressing Sam some time ago. " _Dirt_."

Sam has to stop this. He latches onto Dean, running his hands all over him. "Dean, I'm sorry, okay? Let's do something else." Dean's body is taut, like he doesn't notice Sam at all; his jaw works and the air moves as if he's forming words without vocalizing them. Sam touches one part of him, then another; his heart hammers high in his chest. "Let's do something else, Dean. Let's do something else, all right?" He presses his mouth to Dean's and hangs on, hangs on, hangs on.

When Dean brings his hands up to his face and finally responds, the grip is too hard. Sam's no delicate flower, but this mechanical-tight. Dean's left bruises in passion before, but this is so dispassionate Sam's frightened. He can't let Dean do something stupid. The hand is probably worse than Sam can fix already.

He drops to his knees. Dean's small and floppy when he takes him out, but Sam opens wide as he can to take all of him in, balls and all, and Dean hisses.

"Sam?"

Sam doesn't dare stop to answer. He digs his fingers into his brother's ass and keeps going, saliva running down his chin and smearing over Dean's pubic hair as the cock in his mouth lengthens and fills. It's too much to hold everything in his mouth, now, and he gags.

Dean's hand shakes when he threads it into Sam's hair. "Sammy. Look at you."

The taste under the foreskin as it stretches and rolls down almost makes Sam upchuck, but there's so much spit around it doesn't last long. Soon it's just Dean, and the familiar shape of him, and Sam can focus on this, just zone out the way this room makes you do and push the fear to the back of his mind. Blood smears over his cheek when Dean clumsily brushes his knuckles over it.

"Yeah, Sammy, there you go. There you go. Make it all right, feed you my dick, take care of you."

Sam's hand seeks one of Dean's, wanting to press their palms together while he does this, but Dean's hands are too busy on his face. He's pressing all over to feel Sam's mouth and jaw, like he needs to verify his cock disappearing into Sam's mouth. "You hungry, little brother? S'okay. I gotcha. Here you, go, baby bird. I'll feed you."

Sam moans around him when his stomach, primed for an earth supper that never came, cramps particularly viciously. Dean's voice gentles, strokes of his hips going long and fluid. "You need it, Sammy, don't you? I know you do. I know you do. I'm gonna take care of you." His length parts Sam's throat again and again.

Up and down, working with lips, tongue, throat. Doesn't seem to be what Dean's after. What does he want? What does Sam have to do to end this?

Fingers press hard at the skin Sam's mouth to feel the shape of his teeth and gums, and Dean makes a needy sound at the back of his throat. "Gotta, Sammy. Gotta let me feed you. Growing like a weed, yeah, I got your grub. Here comes the airplane. That's good. Take your medicine. Made for me. Made to eat me up and keep me." Sam makes a noise and pulls him deeper, and Dean's hands fly down to feel his throat work as he swallows.

"So good for me. C'mon. C'mere. I'm gonna feed you."

Feeling Sam's teeth through his face isn't good enough anymore. Dean shoves his fingertips past Sam's lips and feels the canines, the incisors, thumbs over a bicuspid. It's difficult to keep the blow job up; Sam's eyes water trying, and when Dean sticks a finger in alongside himself to feel Sam's tongue, Sam chokes and loses the rhythm. He's fucking trying to make this good for Dean, but there's too much in his mouth and he can't help it when his sharp bottom teeth catch on the underside of Dean's cock and drag, hard.

"Son of a bitch!"

Sam wouldn't apologize for that even if he could. It's Dean's fault. He expects Dean to pull out and bitch him out. Instead, Dean's hand wraps around Sam's chin, only instead of wrenching his mouth open, Dean _closes_ it before thrusting back in hard over Sam's teeth.

"Do it again." Anger flares in Sam. If that's what Dean thinks he wants, _fine_ , he'll make him regret ever asking. He drags his teeth down the delicate skin hard enough to bruise. "Harder. _Harder."_

Sam hesitates. He gives Dean another, a little harder, and rolls his balls that way he likes, hoping to push him over with that or at least get him on a different track. Dean seems close, but he's seemed close since Sam got his mouth on him and this just keeps going. He can't get enough and he won't shut up. "So good. Yeah, Sammy, yeah. Let me. Let me. Eat me."

His voice torques higher and higher, until he's almost keening.

 _Eat me_.

Possession, perversity, just a rotten sense of humor—Sam doesn't know what makes him say it. Still less does he know how Dean understands it, considering how garbled it is. But he thinks, _Carrots_ , and with his mouth full, he says, "Rawr."

Hands clamp on either side of his head. "Bite it off!"

Sam stops and Dean keeps going. He rides right over Sam's sudden immobility, thrusting crazily into his face, and Sam thinks he must have heard wrong until Dean repeats it sounding like he's in agony: "Bite it off, bite it off, _bite it off!"_

Sam cannot breathe. He couldn't breathe even if Dean pulled out; his lungs are paralyzed and he doesn't realize that he's pushing, then pummeling at Dean's stomach and hips until Dean lands on his ass in the dirt.

Breathing comes back online and suddenly Sam's doubled over coughing. He can't hear Dean over himself, and without touch Sam has no sense of him. He hauls in lungfuls of air and sinks his fingers into the dirt while white and yellow spots teeter in the corners of the room.

Dean's gone silent. Seconds ago he couldn't shut the fuck up, and now he's gone as if the universe switched him off.

Sam's arms are shaking. "That wasn't fucking funny, Dean."

There's no answer. Several seconds later, a faint shifting sound implies Dean picking himself up off the ground.

Sam crawls over and into the emergency blanket nest, not caring how loud his movements are in the room. He's freezing; nothing keeps them warm anymore except each other, and sometimes not even that. He curls up on his side facing the wall and puts his fingers in his armpits. The Mylar surface of the blanket he's lying on is damp; everything in here is, covered in a fine layer of moisture that seeps from the earth and has collected over time from their breath, and his shirt is sticky over the jut of his scapulas. Right then, he'd choose fire over food if he had the option.

Dean's near-silent when he comes up behind him. He's nothing but breathing in the dark, no face, no shape. The blanket lifts up when he stretches out at Sam's back.

Dean wraps his arms around him, and Sam shudders.

* * *

Touch is the most precious thing, in the dark. Conversation let them feel human for a while, but there's not a lot of talking left to do anymore. There's nothing left in the room to taste, and the smells have been static so long that the sense has ceased to register, so the only things left are proprioception, pressure, and texture. Touch is the only thing making them real.

Sam doesn't know what Dean is or what he can do to him, but he can't stop touching him.

 _my father moved through dooms of love  
through sames of am  
through haves of give_

Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra.

Sam lies on the earth and reaches his hands up, as far as they can go, but he cannot feel the ceiling. His fingers touch nothing. Whatever's up there makes no sound or smell.

They're on a floor. The floor has walls. Gravity holds them gently down in the nestle of this hand, but there is no roof. It's possible it was never there at all. They lie safe in the belly of the spinning dark.

 _his anger was as right as rain  
his pity was as green as grain_

Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo.

 _his flesh was flesh  
his blood was blood  
his sorrow was as true as bread  
though dull were all we taste as bright  
love is the whole and more than all._

Amen.

* * *

What catches Sam's mind when it falls up is Dean trying to get through the wall. Dean's fingers are very real because he's split them open. Sam folds his own around them and pulls him back as cleanly as he can, but Dean's already missing fingernails.

They lie panting on the floor once Dean's stopped struggling. The movement has exhausted them both.

It is difficult to act gently with so much anger clawing him open from inside. Sam gets out the first aid kit and takes Dean's fingers one at a time, working until the sticky ends are perhaps clean and are secure in a layer of band-aids. His right hand is warm and swollen along one metacarpal; there's nothing Sam can do for that but wrap it again.

Dean submits to this. His body language is a blank. The weapons are buried in a corner of the room with water jugs stacked on top, away from the sanitation trench.

Sam knows Dean's going to speak. Neither of them has said anything for so long that language has started to seem like some science fiction daydream that had taken place entirely in his own head, but Dean's disused voice is real enough. "I want you to listen to me."

"No."

Dean sighs. Before, Sam would have tried to parse the meaning of that sigh, but clearly he doesn't understand even Dean's vocabulary as well as he thought.

"You have always been the most important thing to me, Sammy."

Good. God. They go however many eternities without speaking a word, and Dean's breaking his silence with a fucking speech? Really? This is Sam's life?

Dean crawls closer and puts his whole hand on Sam's belly, soothing and rubbing circles over muscles that are now in a permanent state of cramp. "'M sorry. I screwed up, with this. I screwed up big time."

The fidelity of his denial takes Sam's breath away. "You screwed up. _You_ screwed up. You're kidding me, right?"

"Sammy." Dean's voice is quiet, steady. He only ever gets this way, resolute and at peace, when he's reached a decision that is going to be a five-star joint Army-Navy fuckup. And yet despite that, he's apprehensive. Sam wouldn't know that if they weren't in here, because he wouldn't know it if they weren't touching so much, but Dean's strung taut. Unsure not of his decision, but of its reception. "It was my job to watch out for you in here, all right? Not his."

Sam is done with this shit. "I think we should dig up the weapons."

It's bravado. He means it, but the unemotional tone is a lie. It makes his pulse race just thinking about it.

Dean pauses fractionally. "That escalated quickly."

It infuriates Sam to have his dramatic announcement dismissed with a joke. He jerks away. "Don't fucking touch me."

Dean reaches for him again. "Sammy, listen—"

"I said don't fucking touch me! I wish you never had!"

There's silence.

He didn't mean it. He wants Dean to know that, but Sam always, always fucks it up and there's no taking it back. Misery and hunger and rage blend into one physical agony through his body. He wraps his arms around his middle and bites his own knee to keep the sound back.

"Fine. Just listen then." Dean's terse. "I know it's getting bad. I know something's gotta give. But it's not gonna be you. You hear me? It won't be you. I won't let it."

"You can't stop it," Sam says, because he keeps trying to count by threes in his head and can't make it past eleven. "I don't want to die this way, Dean."

"I'm not asking you to."

"Then what? Dean, please. Please let's just dig up the weapons. I don't want to get even worse before it's over. I don't want you to see me like this, I don't want to see _you_ like this, I know I'm a fucking loser, okay, but _not like this_ , Dean, please, I'm not— I'm sorry—"

"No, you're not. _No you're not_. None of this is your fault, Sam." It is, though. Sam started it. He doesn't even know what he means by that anymore, he just knows that he did. "Listen to me." Dean's nose is cold where it presses into his cheek. "You're not a loser. You're not a fuckup. You're a flaming asshole and you're an arrogant bitch, but you are the most important thing. The most important thing, Sam."

"You shouldn't be here."

"You're my brother. I'm gonna be wherever you are. Always."

Early on, Sam might have fantasized about finishing it to get back at Dad, to make him regret this, to win, but now it carries only the humiliation of defeat. "I can't do this anymore, Dean."

"What if there was a way I could keep you going?"

Sam goes still in his arms.

Not with shock, though. No; whatever this is, it isn't shocking. They are deep in depths of height, and thou-shalts and shalt-nots don't apply anymore. Sam still doesn't want to do it, though.

"Do you understand, Sam?"

"Yes," he whispers.

"You've got to let me. You're strong; you can do this."

"I don't want to."

"All my life, I've known that if it ever came down to this, that I could do anything to get you to the finish line, I'd do it no matter what. This isn't all that different."

"It's pretty different, Dean."

Dean pauses. Then, quiet: "Yeah. Yeah, it is."

"How could you ever even think I could do that? How'm I supposed to—" _Jesus_.

"Because you're made for me. You're made _of_ me, Sammy; need it to be you."

He's supposed to take his brother apart. His _brother_. Has Dean seen Dean? How can Sam do that? If Dean were sick and wasting, maybe. Maybe then it would be possible to imagine parting shoulder from torso, neck from shoulder, to imagine parts as just shapes that don't move and not the constant movement of the whole; or if Dean were thin and angry and unfinished like Sam, so it wouldn't be as obvious how wrong it is to cut into what's complete.

It's impossible to imagine that Sam's body could rework all that into something alike, something vital and magnificent. Something more than Sam.

Dean expels a breath. "Why do you think we're like this, huh? 'Cause it ain't about getting off. I know you feel it, too. I know it, Sammy: the way you always push it so far, the way you fucking hurt yourself trying to get me deeper inside. But it's never enough, is it?"

"Dean—"

"Is it?" he presses. "It never will be, Sam. Not their way. This can be our way."

Sam screws his face up with the effort of not crying. "But I need you."

"I know you do, Sammy, but not like you think. You can finish this. Just let me take care of you. If I have to go somewhere, I want it to be into you. Please don't let me just get swallowed up by this hole."

"We should both do it." His voice cracks.

"No, Sam. Don't you dare."

"I can't kill you."

"Not asking you to kill me, Sammy. Asking you to save me. Please. Let me stay with you."

"You're not talking about staying with me. You're talking about leaving me."

"Sam, I just tried to get through the wall. If this goes on, I'm going to try again. This is the _only_ way I can stay with you. I want to be with you, always want to be there to watch out for you, but none of that means anything if I can't watch out for you now."

Dean shuts his eyes. Sam feels it against his cheek. "I'm tired, Sam. I just want to do something right, finally."

Sam has always wanted all of Dean's secrets. Now he's got them and it doesn't matter, because he doesn't understand them. He's ground his teeth over the thought of waitresses or bartenders or even friends getting to see any occluded parts Sam hasn't, but he isn't jealous, anymore. This feeling makes jealousy look like an empty exoskeleton, but the worst is that Sam can't stop wanting to have every part Dean has to give even now.

 _Be with you always._ Yes, Dean will be with him always, but not in the way that he thinks.

He says yes.

* * *

They dig up the weapons. Well. Sam digs up the weapons. He won't let him do that to his bandaged fingers, no matter what else is about to happen. It's harder to get them back up than it was to put them down there, because they don't have them to dig with, but that was the idea. They wanted to have to think about it.

Dean can't help because of his hands, but he's with Sam, a silent, unwavering presence.

Sam brings them all back up one by one: ammunition. Handguns, corrupt with soil but ready. Bowie knives, both gifts on their tenth birthdays. Finally the penknives, the one thing they could always hold and use in front of other children. Two of each, two by two.

They find a place to settle. Sam has the backpacks at hand to help to make Dean comfortable, but he doesn't reach for them. For as long as he can, he'll do that himself.

The knife shakes as soon as it's in his hand. He didn't even consider the gun.

"I can't do it."

"Yeah, you can."

"No, I can't."

Dean moves closer. "You can. It'll be okay. We'll start small."

All Sam's known his whole life is how to follow Dean, so he lets his brother slide in close behind him guide his hands, warm front to his back. So much heat in him, even after so long down here. He folds Sam's hand around the bowie knife.

"Here." Dean guides their interlaced fingers until Sam feels the point press on something slightly yielding. He tenses. "It's okay. We do it all the time for rituals. And it's where you'll have to start, after."

The blade cuts.

It's smooth and deep, but Dean's sound is small. Warmth is spilling out when he raises his left hand to Sam's mouth. "Open up," he says softly.

Hesitantly, Sam does. It's different than when Dean cut his finger before. This is much more blood, much hotter, enough for Dean to pour from his palm past Sam's lips. His mind gets stuck on it. His brother bleeding is not supposed to be a welcome thing, not ever, but he can't help that it tastes good.

Dean presses the cut to Sam's mouth, milks his hand into it. "There you go. That's my boy. You're mine to feed. No one else can ever have you this way. That's the only thing I ask. Don't want you ever to so much as order a steak bloody after me."

Sam already knows he'll never be able to.

Dean feeds him from the cut for as long as it bleeds, but eventually it stops. Dean's fingers clean up his face. Then he keeps them there, pressing the backs of them against Sam's cheek. He kisses Sam's temple. "Sammy."

Sam is surely dreaming.

Slowly Dean pulls away. He moves until he's in front of Sam, and then shifts awkwardly, hands closing first on one thing around them, then another. Sam realizes he's been left holding the knife. "You'll need the blanket under me." There's a crinkling sound. "Our tablecloth. Use it to catch everything you can."

"You've thought about this. You've been lying here, thinking about this."

Dean sighs. "Don't do this to yourself, Sammy."

"How long?"

"It doesn't matter. You need it now. I'm going to give it to you. Okay? You're my brother. Come on. Let's sit."

Dean has stacked the backpacks behind Sam. He makes to cover Sam with the tablecloth and sit on top of it.

"No."

"Sam, I told you. So you get all of it."

"No. Put it under both of us."

When the blankets are spread out, Dean sits back, against Sam. He sighs. It's his contented sigh.

"Warm apple pie," he mumbles.

Slowly, Sam raises the knife.

Eating a large animal takes effort and time. Flesh is not the same as meat. Cutting living tissue, or recently living tissue, isn't the same as cutting something already prepared for the table. It is difficult to do and takes perseverance.

Sam will cut once, across Dean's left carotid, about four centimeters deep. Blood will cover them both. It will be hot, then warm, then cold. Sam will hold him through all of it.

Long after the last echoes of pulse have faded, when Sam can move again, he will lay his brother on the ground. It will take a little effort to lift his brother from his chest, where the blood has clotted. Dean will have sealed them together.

Sam will do as Dean has asked. He will bundle the blanket they're lying on and carry it, carefully, somewhere safe. He will put Dean down on another one. He will lay his knife over Dean's heart and, though it isn't the easiest cut to make, take the pectoral muscle. He'll start there.

It will take a very long time to chew.

He won't be able to eat everything. Not in time. The chamber is cool, though, and things will last some time. He will return to cut into Dean's upper arms, calves, and thighs. The tissue will get easier to pierce. He will return to the whole body each time; he will not put his knife deep into the joints and rock the blade to disarticulate them. Every time he eats from Dean, Dean will be Dean. When they are out of time and the limbs have given all they can, though Dean doesn't know it and probably never intended it, Sam will take his heart.

Sam rests the blade along Dean's neck. Dean doesn't stir. He only sighs fractionally, as if he's going to sleep.

Sam's impulse is to call his name. He wants to hear his brother's voice one more time. He wants to talk to him, but there isn't anything left to say.

He touches the amulet where it lies on its cord.

The ceiling makes a sound.

For a moment he thought it was just a ghost in his mind, like the lights in his vision. There's another one, though, and though it's faint, it's perceptible in the deep stillness. It's a sort of rasping sound.

They both tense.

The ceiling, which had evanesced into something hypothetical, is suddenly very real again. Sam can feel exactly how far overhead it is. He can picture it. He knows what it's made of and its shape. They are no longer at the bottom of a metaphysical pit of infinite depth, but a specific distance beneath the ground. And that distance is shrinking as the sounds grow louder.

Their reality crumbles a little more with every audible shovelful. Even so, it takes them a long time to move, sitting, listening. Then they scramble. The weapons get shoved into bags. Clothing gets adjusted. There's a spitting sound really close to Sam's ear, and after a second of groping in the darkness, Dean's shirt tail cleans around Sam's mouth.

The digging gets louder and louder until it ends with a clang. Without meaning to, Sam and Dean fall to their knees, holding each other. There's loud scraping, a clank, boots grinding against metal. The door groans when it rises.

And there is light.

* * *

There's a lot Sam doesn't understand, afterward.

He doesn't understand what refeeding syndrome is. He doesn't understand why, when his heart begins to beat asymmetrically, he feels it in his belly. He doesn't understand why he sees John put Dean on the ground a couple days later through the cloudy kitchen window, or why, when Sam reaches John, they both work together to subdue him. He doesn't understand how clocks work.

He doesn't understand how to sleep alone. He doesn't understand how to sleep at all, for a while, and there's also a period where he doesn't understand how to do anything else. He doesn't understand how Dean can keep using FP-10; Sam himself switches to Hoppe's No. 9, the first thing in recent memory that has won him surprised affection and approval from their father.

He doesn't understand how Dean has no objection to the car when suddenly he can't stay in any room smaller than about 250 square feet longer than thirty minutes, less if it doesn't have windows. He doesn't understand why Dean is the one to suggest that their physical therapy take the form of a spirit hunt in Little Rock. He doesn't understand why Dean has trouble eating sometimes, but will go to the lengths of burying his uneaten fries and quarter-pounders under the spent paper towels in the men's room to hide it. He doesn't understand how Dean can voluntarily go more than twelve hours without a shower.

He doesn't understand why, after all the times he swore he'd never let somebody do something like that without fighting back, Bob McDowell and John Winchester aren't facing criminal prosecution. He doesn't understand why he himself walks six miles into the Ozarks beside his father and brother and shoots a black dog, which looks exactly like a regular dog, between the eyes. He doesn't understand extreme eating shows.

Sam's first English teacher back from the break assigns a What I Did on My Summer Vacation essay, citing it with a rueful grin as an oldie but a goodie, and Sam starts laughing right there at his desk and keeps going so long Dean has to come and get him.

Some things, of course, Sam does understand.

They were underground for six days and twenty-one hours. Sam understands this because he's shown a newspaper. It was supposed to be an even week, but John got more and more impatient the closer it got, pissing off Bob McDowell, who wanted his house back, until he finally decided that a few hours shy was close enough. He understands, from a phone call to Pastor Jim he makes from a payphone at an I-70 truck stop, that Kyle Lacey, one of the hunters on John's wendigo hunt, hasn't been seen since September, and that Ronald Coates, the other, has been seen but not heard from, since he doesn't speak to hunters or anyone vaguely associated with hunters even if you point a gun at him. Lacey's sister tried it out.

He understands that he has leverage, now. They stop moving during individual school semesters.

He understands that if he ever used that leverage, Dean would never speak to him again. But that just brings him back to the things he doesn't understand.

Life goes on largely unchanged, apart from the added geographical stability. The hunts are dangerous, the accommodations suck, Sam can't do anything right, and peanut butter and ramen are no more palatable than they ever were, though Sam has learned that there is, contrary to what he thought before, always enough of it.

Dean is the best big brother. He sneaks Sam sips of whiskey and mocks his music and punches his arm and turns up at his games sometimes and kills things that sneak up on him. Dean is incredible with girls. He's always been popular with the ladies, and comfortable broadcasting it, but it's nothing to how much action he sees now. He goes out most nights when John doesn't have something else for him to do and generally comes back somewhere around oh-dark-thirty. There are these giant nests of paper scraps, all of them phone numbers, that Dean leaves on the nightstand when he hunts through his pocket for his keys, and Sam has sometimes distinguished as many as four separate perfumes on his clothes in the laundry the following day.

Sam and John get into a fight when Sam refuses to eat meat out of the blue that ends in Sam breaking a plate and John breaking his tooth. During the fight, Dean says nothing.

Sam's grades have always been good, but now they are about as good as it is possible for grades to be. On the one hand, it's hard to study when John is ordering up hundred-line translations from a hundred miles away like incredibly long-distance pizza. On the other hand, it's a lot easier to study when suddenly Dean is almost always a hundred miles away with him, and with waitresses and bartenders and barflies when not. Sam writes an essay on Buddhist dark retreat sadhana. It wins prizes.

He gets to be so good at hiding their collective fraud trail that his father is visibly and vocally impressed. He calls Sam's work thorough, which is the highest compliment in John Winchester's vocabulary. Well, of course he's fucking thorough. He wants a legal name he can use when it's time.

He tells them balls-out that he's going to college. That is, he tells John, and he makes sure Dean is there to hear it. John is almost blasé about it. Dean isn't. Dean looks he wants to take a swing at Sam, which Sam would really enjoy, but John tells him to stand down so that's that. Dean doesn't have a rebellion thing, never has, and now Sam knows why. Hilariously, John gives him an ultimatum. He is the only one in the room who thinks it is going to have any effect on the future.

Dean's on the phone with Sam when he's in a car accident. He hits a freak patch of ice on a bend in the road in mid-November, on a night that's not otherwise that close to freezing, and sends his $500 Camaro over the guard rail. Sam doesn't know that's what happened until he gets there, of course; all he hears on the line is a thump and the call cutting out. He runs about three miles in cold rain to find the spot and runs his hands all over his brother. Dean's groggy, and cut, and the thought of Dean walking home in this condition getting soaked to the bone scares the shit out of him, but they can't just sit by the side of the road and wait for help because Dean won't use the emergency blanket Sam brought.

John's away that night. Dean lets Sam undress him and check his wounds but shrugs his hands off as soon as the last stitch is tied. Sam spends the night beside his bed, anyway. In the morning, Dean's first act is to direct a shit-eating grin in Sam's direction and throw his dirty socks on Sam's pillow, and Sam would take it all back if their father would just apologize. He doesn't.

Sam uses Pastor Jim as a permanent address for Stanford correspondence. He doesn't trust Bobby enough. None of his schools in the past year and a half have offered Latin, but he sits the AP exam for it anyway and gets a five.

He doesn't understand how much of it happened.

Dean still dares him to to stupid shit and Sam still occasionally does it. He still doodles boobs on Sam's school books just to wind him up, and if Sam hears "Master of Puppets" one more time he's going to light himself on fire, and _nothing has changed_ except Sam knows at least some of it really happened, because Dean hasn't touched him since.

Once Sam would have thought that having a blameless relationship with Dean again would have ameliorated his relationship with their father. Instead, the further apart he and Dean drift, the more strain falls on his relationship with John, not that it needed any help in that department because he fucking did this to them.

Sam watches Dean's back flex in the backseat of the Impala. How the valley of his spine twists, not like like a serpent but like something blind, pulled up from the earth and straining. He beats off to it and smears his semen all over Dean's pillows until they're coated completely, so that Dean will have to sleep breathing him in; he smears it inside Dean's underwear so he'll have to wear it close, he smears it on his toothbrush. Or maybe he doesn't, he can't keep it straight anymore.

Leather jacket, Zeppelin on the stereo, dive bars under his nails, card games he's young enough to get out of when he's too young for them to go the way he thought, grin like a car crash that knows it's going to happen. Bacon cheeseburgers. Willing bodies. Hard runs with baby brother afterward. Simple, immediate desires in your face, right where everybody can see them. Sam watches Dean create Dean Winchester and is impressed despite himself. He's even good at acting impulsive.

People keep trying to feed Sam things. He must be looking lean. Dean didn't get what he wanted, but then again maybe he did, because he's with Sam every bite.

Pastor Jim was a good choice for trusting with his school letters. He tells Sam he understands.

John has given Dean the Impala for his twenty-first birthday, and graduating to the front passenger seat at last is strange. It's really no better than being in the back, because John's still steering them just one car up ahead; it isn't like _they're_ driving anywhere. At least Sam never has to find glitter or hair ties up here, though.

Financial aid is a whole world of anxiety Sam never reckoned upon, but he gets sliced nearly down to his femoral by an acheri and, in the week this grants him, manages to get everything straightened out. More or less. Dean's the only one who knows that's how he spends it. The emotion in his eyes isn't betrayal, but disgust. Sam wonders why John and Dean are so amped to die protecting these civilians whose chosen lives they apparently think are the scum of the earth.

The marks Sam's extracurricular activities leave net him a concerned and earnest consultation from a guidance counselor. He passes the screening fine. Even if he didn't know the right answers to give, he's far from suicidal. Sam is attached to life, even when he's not necessarily its biggest fan. He cannot comprehend wanting to die, though, confusingly, sometimes he thinks he can comprehend wanting to be unmade.

Sam buys a bus ticket. It disappears. He thinks of a child throwing out his parents' cigarettes; he just buys another. He doesn't hide that one, either. He thinks of that cramped school back in Flushing—what were they, twelve and sixteen? It was hot and they were only there for a week. He thinks of the day Dean hit the age Sam is now and the way the world began to curve toward him, toward his swagger and his musculature and his very good teeth and how this brought a whole cataract of humanity falling right into his lap, where a little boy with stupid hair and messy cheeks used to sit and chew on his fingers, and thinks, _You left first_.

Who the fuck cares what Dean thinks about.

The night he leaves is anticlimactic. At least, it is for Sam. John really thought that there was a battle of wills going on here, but Sam has already played the game of chicken to end all, and their father has no idea what he's going up against.

Dean sides with John. He doesn't say all the same words, in fact he never says any, but he watches the whole thing and the emotion in his eyes is hate. Of all the various things Sam left back in the box, the one he regrets most is whichever would have made that hurt. But the regret is cursory. He finally got the occluded parts of Dean, and even if they poison him, he wouldn't change it. He could make himself forget, the box was a perfect cul-de-sac experience just made for lopping off and pretending never happened, but he won't do that, either. He won't spit out Dean's secrets, not when he gave up everything else to get them.

He carries them to Stanford in his mouth.


End file.
